“The curtain caught on the window latch,” replied Miss Masters. She picked up the agreement and blotted the signature. “Thank you,” she said, “now I’ve got something for my $1,000.”
Druce laughed uneasily. The maid, Anna, entered from an adjoining apartment. Druce realized uncomfortably that the interview was over.
“Well,” he said, going to the door and smiling sentimentally at Miss Masters, “so long. See you later.”
“Yes,” replied Miss Masters in a tone he didn’t just like, “I’ll see you later.”
CHAPTER XXI
DRUCE PROVES A TRUE PROPHET
Saturday night begins at the Cafe Sinister at nine o’clock. At that hour the twin columns of glass at its portal are lighted and the Levee pours the first of its revelers into the spacious ground floor drinking room. The orchestra strikes up the first of its syncopated melodies; the barkeepers arrange their polished glasses in glittering rows; the waiters, soft-footed and watchful, take their places at their appointed stations.
The revelers come in an order regulated by inexorable circumstance. In the van are the women with the professional escorts, haggard creatures who have served their time in the district and who are on the brink of that oblivion which means starvation and slow death. Youth and health have flown and now no paint nor cosmetic can cloak their real character. They must come early because their need of money is bitter and a watchful eye for opportunity must take the place of the physical allurement that once made life in the tenderloin so easy. They sink into their seats and wait, contemptuous of their escorts, and yet pitifully dependent upon them. For without the escorts they cannot enter the Cafe Sinister. That is a tribute which the rulers of the tenderloin, through them, pays tribute to the majesty of the law.