“I thought she might be still in that—hotel, as they call it,” Harvey, haggard with his night’s search, told Miss Randall. “I went to the jail too, but of course they would not let her inside there so late, even if she had wanted to.”
“She is sure to go there today to see Druce. Try again, Mr. Spencer, when you go out from here,” said Miss Randall.
“And keep you eye on Druce. Nobody will suspect you of being a detective. You can telephone here if you see any activity around him,” said a clever special from headquarters.
“Good scheme,” commended the journalist, another of Mary Randall’s strongest aids.
Harvey Spencer made notes of the right steps to take and, thanking Miss Randall with a curious humility, went out again on his quest.
“Now we must learn what the vice-moneymakers will try to do next,” said a former high official in the municipality. “Our one safe bet is that they will all get together and that John Boland, the boss of the bunch, will map out the fight against us.”
“Is it a losing fight?” asked a famous banker, known among his intimates as the hard-headed enthusiast.
“Right against wrong can never be permanently a losing fight,” quietly said a small muscular clergyman from the northwest side.
“It has taken two thousand years for mankind to begin this fight against buying and selling young virgins who can be coaxed or thrust into the market-place,” said Mary Randall. “We must fight on, even in one seemingly losing field. It is not to be believed that the people of this nation will be content to submit very much longer to the presence of a band of prowling wolves tolerated by courts and protected by rascally lawyers whose acknowledged trade is to destroy virtue,—the latent motherhood of young women,—whose whole activity is directed to the exploitation of our little lost sisters.”
“Chicago has to lead the fight, as she has been one of the leaders in the trade,” said the banker. “Now, for our next step!”