The policeman was puzzled until Peggy showed him the address, and then he smiled broadly. “Well, you might just as well forget it,” he said. “It might have been a theater once, but not any longer. The Settlement House has it now, and it’s the local boys’ club, complete with a gymnasium equipped for every sport. It’s done a lot of good in this neighborhood, I can tell you.”
Peggy and Amy thanked him, and then asked him about the Gypsies. They hadn’t realized there were any in the city—or at least not enough to make up a whole district.
“It’s not a large district,” he said. “No more than a thousand or so, at the most. At least that’s what they say, but it’s not easy getting them to hold still to be counted. They’re good people, once you get to know them. Only they speak a language nobody can understand, and their ways are different. If I were you, I wouldn’t hang around here much.”
Thanking him, the girls left, not without casting a few glances back over their shoulders until they were sure they were clear of the area.
The remaining theaters on their first day’s list were to the west of the Gypsy district, and these too proved to offer nothing. The district they now found themselves in was on the outskirts of Chinatown, and was half Chinese and half mixed-New-York. Of the theaters on the list for this part of town, one had been at one time a Chinese movie house, and was now a Rescue Mission. Signboards in rusty black with large white lettering warned sinners to repent, and offered soup and bread to anyone who attended the services. From inside, the girls heard some wheezy voices and an even wheezier organ sounding the plaintive notes of a hymn.
Peggy realized with a start that this was the Bowery, the sinister, pathetic district inhabited by the poorest examples of humanity—those who had almost resigned from the human race. Looking about her, she saw tattered men in doorways, sleeping figures huddled under stairs, groups of tough-looking tramps standing idly on street corners. She was suddenly aware that she and Amy were the only women in sight.
“Amy,” she said in a shaky voice, “I’m afraid we shouldn’t have come here! This is the Bowery, and you remember what the guide said about it when we took that bus trip. He called it the worst district of the city!”
“Oh dear!” Amy whispered, looking nervously about her. “What should we do now?”
“I think we’d better go,” Peggy said. “Chinatown starts right across the street, and I remember what the guide said about that, too. He said not to believe all the old mystery stories; Chinatown is just about the safest place in the city. The Chinese have practically no criminals among them, and any tourist is safe there. Let’s go!”
Trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, and doing all they could to avoid the appearance of hurrying, Peggy and Amy crossed the street and turned into a narrow alley between two Chinese food shops whose windows were filled with things that neither girl could identify.