Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure

"See, here!" cried he, turning to Mary at once. "What do you mean by bringing this disgrace down upon the most fashionable candy shop in New York. You will ruin our business."

"Oh, Mr. Fleming," began Mary brokenly, "I don't understand what you mean. I have done nothing, sir!"

"Nothing! Nothing! You and this miserable sister of yours! Complaining to the police, are you, about men flirting with the girls in my store? Do you think society women want to come to a shop where the girls flirt with customers? No! I'm done right now. Get your hat and get out of here!"

"Why, what do you mean?" gasped the girl, her fingers contracting and twitching nervously.

"You're fired – bounced – ousted!" he cried. "That's what I mean." He turned toward the other girls and in a strident voice, unmindful of the two or three customers in the place, continued. "Let this be a lesson. I will discharge every girl in the place if I see her flirting. The idea!"

And he pompously walked back to his office as important as a toad in a lonely puddle.

Mary turned to the counter, which she caught for support. One of the girls ran to her, but Mrs. Trubus, standing close by, placed a motherly arm about her waist.

"There, you poor dear. Don't you despair. This is a large world, and there are more places for an honest, clever girl to work in than a candy store run by a popinjay! You get your hat and get right into my car, and I will take you down to my husband's office, and see what we can do there. Come right along, now, with me."

"Oh, I must go home!" murmured Mary brokenly.

But at the elderly woman's insistence she walked back, unsteadily, to the wardrobe room for her hat and coat.

"How dare you walk out the front way," raved the manager, as she was leaving with Mrs. Trubus.

Mary did not hear him. The tears, a blessed relief, were coursing down her flower-white cheeks as the kindly woman steadied her arm.

"Well! That suits me well enough," muttered Mr. Fleming philosophically, as he retired to his private office. "I lost a lot at poker last night – and here are two salaries for almost a full week that won't go into anyone's pockets but my own. First, last and always, a business man, say I."

CHAPTER XIV
CHARITY AND THE MULTITUDE OF SINS

In the outer office of William Trubus an amiable little scene was being enacted, far different from the harrowing ones which had made up the last twelve hours for poor Mary.

Miss Emerson, the telephone girl, was engaged in animated repartee with that financial genius of the "Mercantile Agency," with whose workings the reader may have a slight familiarity, located on the floor below of the same Fifth Avenue building.

"Yes, dearie, during business hours I'm as hard as nails, but when I shut up my desk I'm just as good a fellow as the next one. All work and no play gathers no moss," remarked Mr. John Clemm.

"You're a comical fellow, Mr. Clemm. I'd just love to go out to-night, as you suggest. And if you've got a gent acquaintance who is like you, I have the swellest little lady friend you ever seen. Her name is Clarice, and she is a manicure girl at the Astor. We might have a foursome, you know."

"That's right, girlie," responded Clemm, as he ingratiatingly placed an arm about her wasp-like waist. "But two's company, and four's too much of a corporation for me."

"Oh, Mr. Clemm – nix on this in here – Mr. Trubus is in his office, and he'll get wise…"

As she spoke, not Mr. Trubus, but his estimable wife interrupted the progress of the courtship. She walked into the doorway, from the elevator corridor, holding Mary's arm.

As she saw the lover-like attitude of the plump Mr. Clemm, she gasped, and then burst out in righteous indignation.

"Why, you shameless girl, what do you mean by such actions in the office of the Purity League? I shall tell my husband at once!"

Miss Emerson sprang away from the amorous entanglement with Mr. Clemm and tried to say something. She could think of nothing which befitted the occasion; all her glib eloquence was temporarily asphyxiated. Mr. Clemm stammered and looked about for some hole in which to conceal himself. He, too, seemed far different from the pugnacious, self-confident dictator who reigned supreme on the floor below.

"William! William Trubus!" called the philanthropist's wife angrily. Her husband heard from within, and he opened the door with a thoroughly startled look.

"My dear wife!" he began, purring and somewhat uncertain as to the cause of the trouble. Mary, nervous as she was, observed a curious interchange of glances between the two men.

"William, I find this brazen creature standing here hugging this man, as though your office, the Purity League's headquarters, were some Lover's Lane! It is disgusting."

"Well, well, my dear," stammered Trubus. "Don't be too harsh."

"I am not harsh, but I have too much respect for you and the high ideals for which I know you battle every hour of the day to endure such a thing. Suppose the Bishop had come in instead of myself? Would he consider such actions creditable to the great purpose for which the church takes up collections twice each year throughout his diocese?"

Trubus tilted back and forth on his toes and tapped the ends of his plump fingers together. He was sparring for time. The girl looked at him saucily, and the offending visitor shrugged his shoulders as he quietly started for the door.

"Tut, tut, my dear! I shall reprimand the girl."

"You shall discharge her at once!" insisted Mrs. Trubus, her eyes flashing. "She will disgrace the office and the great cause."

Trubus was in a quandary. He looked about him. Miss Emerson, with a confident smile, walked toward the general office on the left.

"I should worry about this job. I'm sick of this charity stuff anyway. I'm going to get a cinch job with a swell broker I know. He runs a lot of bunco games, too – but he admits. Don't let the old lady worry about me, Mr. Trubus, but don't forget that I've got two weeks' salary coming to me. And you just raised my weekly insult to twenty-five dollars last Saturday, you know, Mr. Trubus."

With this Parthian shot, she slammed the door of the general stenographers' room, and left Mr. Trubus to face his irate wife.

"You pay that girl twenty-five dollars for attending to a telephone, William? Why, that's more money than you earned when we had been married ten years. Twenty-five dollars a week for a telephone girl!"

"There, my dear, it is quite natural. She is especially tactful and worth it," said Trubus, in embarrassment. "You are not exactly tactful yourself, my dear, to nag me in front of an employee. As the Scriptures say, a gentle wife…"

Mrs. Trubus gave the philanthropist one deep look which seemed to cause aphasia on the remainder of the Scriptural quotation.

For the first time Trubus noticed Mary Barton, standing in embarrassed silence by the door, wishing that she could escape from the scene.

"Who is this young person, my dear?"

"This is a young girl who is in deep trouble, and without a position through no fault of her own. I brought her down to your office to have you help her, William."

"But, alas, our finances are so low that we have no room for any additional office force," began Trubus.

"There, that will do. If you pay twenty-five dollars a week to the telephone operator no wonder the finances are low. You have just discharged her, and I insist on your giving this young lady an opportunity."

Trubus reddened, and tried to object.

But his good wife overruled him.

"Have you ever used a switchboard, miss?" he began.

"Yes, sir. In my last position I began on the switchboard, and worked that way for nearly two months. I am sure I can do it."

Trubus did not seem so optimistic. But, at his wife's silent argument – looks more eloquent than a half hour of oratory, he nodded grudgingly.

"Well, you can start in. Just hang your hat over on the wall hook. Come into my office, my dear wife."

They entered, and Mary sat down, still in a daze. She had been so suddenly discharged and then employed again that it seemed a dream. Even the terrible hours of the night seemed some hideous nightmare rather than reality.

Miss Emerson came from the side room, attired in a street garb which would have brought envy to many a chorus girl.

"Oh, my dear, and so you are to follow my job. Well, I wish you joy, sweetie. Tell Papa Trubus that I'll be back after lunch time for my check. And keep your lamps rolling on the old gink and he'll raise your salary once a month. He's not such a dead one if he is strong on this charity game. Life with Trubus is just one telephone girl after another … ta, ta, dearie. I'm off stage."

And she departed, leaving simple Mary decidedly mystified by her diatribe.

A few minutes brought another diversion. This time it was Sylvia Trubus and Ralph Gresham, her fiancé, come for a call.

"Is my father in?" she asked, absorbed in the well groomed, selfish young man. Mary rang the private bell and announced Miss Trubus. Her father hurried to the door, and when he saw his prospective son-in-law his face wreathed in smiles.

"Ah, Mr. Gresham, Ralph, I might say, I am delighted! Come right in!"

Mary was startled as she heard the name of the young girl's sweetheart.

"I'm afraid that she will not be as happy as she thinks, if daddy has told me right about Ralph Gresham. But, oh, if I could hear something from Bobbie about Lorna. I believe I will call him up."

She was just summoning the courage for a private call when the private office door opened, and Gresham, Sylvia, her mother and Trubus emerged.

"I will return in ten minutes, Miss," said Trubus. "If there are any calls just take a record of them. Allow no one to go into my private office."

"Yes, sir."

Mary waited patiently for a few moments, when suddenly a telephone bell began to jangle inside the private office.

"That's curious," she murmured, looking at her own key-board. "There's no connection." Again she heard it, insistent, yet muffled.

She walked to the door and opened it. As she did so the wind blew in from the open casement, making a strong draught. Half a dozen papers blew from Trubus' desk to the floor. Frightened lest her inquisitiveness should cause trouble, Mary hurriedly stooped and picked up the papers, carrying them back to the desk. As she leaned over it she noticed a curious little metal box, glass-covered. Under this glass an automatic pencil was writing by electrical connection.

"What on earth can that be?" she wondered. The bell tinkled, in its muffled way, once more.

The moving pencil went on. She watched it, fascinated, even at the risk of being caught, hardly realizing that she was doing what might be termed a dishonorable act.

"Paid Sawyer $250. Girl safe, but still unconscious."

Mary's heart beat suddenly. The thought of her own sister was so burdensome upon her own mind that the mention by this mysterious communication of a girl, "safe but still unconscious," strung her nerves as though with an electric shock. She leaned over the little recording instrument, which was built on a hinged shelf that could be cunningly swung into the desk body, and covered with a false front. As she did so she saw a curious little instrument, shaped somewhat like the receiver of a telephone receiver. Mary's experience with her father's work told her what that instrument was.

"A dictagraph!" she exclaimed.

Instinctively she picked it up, and heard a conversation which was so startling in its import to herself that her heart seemed to congeal for an instant.

"I tell you, Jack, the girl is still absolutely out of it. We can risk shipping her anywhere the way she is now. I chloroformed her in the auto as soon as we got away from the candy store. But that Burke nearly had us, for I saw him coming."

"You will have to dispose of her to-day, Shepard. Give her some strong coffee – a good stiff needleful of cocaine will bring her around. Do something, that's all, or you don't get a red cent of the remaining three hundred. Now, I'm a busy man. You'll have to talk louder, too, my hearing isn't what it used to be."

"Say, Clemm, quit this kidding about your ears. I've tried you out and you can hear better than I can. There's some game you're working on me and if there is, I'll…"

"Can the tragedy, Shepard. Save it for that famous whipping stunt of yours. Beat this girl up a bit, and tell me where she is."

"I'll do that in an hour, and not a minute sooner, and I've got to have the other three hundred."

Mary dropped the receiver. She wanted to know where that conversation could come from. Down the side of the desk she traced a delicate wire. Under the rug it went, and across to the window. She looked out. A fire escape passed the window. It was open. She saw the little wire cross through the woodwork to the outside brick construction and down the wall. Softly she clambered down the fire-escape until she could peer through the window on the floor below.

There at a desk, in the private office of the "Mercantile" association, sat the man who had been hugging her predecessor at Trubus' switchboard, the man who had exchanged the curious looks with the philanthropist. Talking to him was the man who had taken her sister away from the candy store the day before!

Hurriedly she climbed back up the fire escape into the window, out through the door of the private office, closing it behind her.

She telephoned Bobbie at the station house. Fortunately he was there. She gave him her address, and before he could express his surprise begged him to hurry to the doorway of the building and wait for her.

He promised.

Mary kept her nerves as quiet as she could, praying that the man Sawyer would not leave before she could follow him with Bobbie. In a few minutes one of the girls from the stenography room came out. Seeing that she was the new girl the young woman spoke: "Do you want me to relieve you while you go to lunch. I'm not going out to-day. I'm so glad to see anyone here but that fresh Miss Emerson that it will be a pleasure."

"Thank you. I do want to go now," said Mary nervously. She hurriedly donned her hat and rushed down to the street. Bobbie was waiting for her, as he had lost not a minute.

They waited behind the big door column for several minutes. Suddenly a man came swinging through the portal. It was Sawyer.

Bobbie remembered him instantly, while Mary gripped his arm until she pinched it.

"We'll follow him," said Burke, for the girl had already told of the dictagraph conversation.

Follow him they did. Up one street and down another. At last the man led them over into Burke's own precinct. He ascended the iron steps of an old-fashioned house which had once been a splendid mansion in generations gone by.

"Ah, that's where Lorna is hidden, as sure as you're standing here, Mary. From what he said no harm has come to her yet. Hurry with me to the station house, and we'll have the reserves go through that house in a jiffy."

It took not more than ten minutes for the police to surround the house. But disappointment was their only reward. Somehow or other the rascals had received a tip of premonition of trouble; perhaps Shepard was suspicious of his principals, and wished to move the girl out of their reach.

The house was empty, except for a few pieces of furniture.

"Look!" cried Mary, as she went through the rooms with Bob. "There is a handkerchief. She snatched it up. It was one of her own, with the initials "M. B." in a monogram.

"Lorna has been here," she exclaimed. "I remember handing her that very handkerchief when we were in the store yesterday."

"What's to be done now?" thought Bobbie. "We had better go up to your father and tell him what we know – it is not as bad as it might have been."

"Precious little comfort," sighed Mary, exhausted beyond tears.

They reached the desolate home, and Bob broke the news to the old man. As Mary poured forth her story of the discovery in Trubus' office, her father's face lighted with renewed hope.

To their surprise he laughed, softly, and then spoke:

"Mary, my child, my long hours of study and labor on my own invention have not been in vain. My dictagraph-recorder – this very model here, which I have just completed shall be put to its first great test to save my own daughter. Heaven could reward me in no more wonderful manner than to let it help in the rescue of little Lorna – why did I not think of it sooner?"

"What shall we do, father?" breathlessly cried Mary.

"Can I help, Mr. Barton?"

"Describe the arrangement of the offices."

Mary rapidly limned the plan of the headquarters of the Purity League. Her father nodded and his lips moved as he repeated her words in a whisper.

"I have it now. You must put the instrument under the telephone switchboard table," he directed. "Pile up a waste-basket, or something that is handy to keep it out of view. I have already adjusted enough fresh cylinders to record at least one hour of conversation. This machine is run by an automatic spring, which you must wind like a clock. Here I will wind it myself to have all in readiness."

He rolled his chair swiftly to his work table, and turned the little crank, continuing his plan of attack.

"Now, take the long wire, and run it through the door of the private office up close to the desk. Attach this disc to the dictagraph receiver. It is so small, and the wiring so fine that it will not be noticed if it is done correctly. Here, Burke. I will do it now to this loose dictagraph receiver. Watch me."

The old man worked swiftly.

Burke scrutinized each move, and nodded in understanding.

"Be careful to cover the wire along the floor with a rug – he must never be allowed to see that, you know. After you have all this prepared, Mary, you must start the mechanism going, and then get the reproduction of the conversation as it comes on the dictagraph."

"All right, father – but how shall we get it there without Mr. Trubus knowing about it? He is very watchful of that room."

Barton patted Bobbie's broad shoulder, with a confident smile.

"I think Officer 4434 can devise a way for that. He has had harder tasks and won out. Now, hurry down with the machine. It is a bit heavy. You had better take it in a taxicab. You will spend all your money on taxicabs, my boy, I am afraid."

"Well, sir, a little money now isn't important enough to worry about if it means happiness for the future – for us all."

Mary's face reddened, and she dropped her eyes. There was an understanding between the three which needed no words for explanation. So it is that the sweetest love creeps into its final nestling place.

"God bless you, my boy. I'm an old man and none too good, but I shall pray for your success."

"Good bye," said Bobbie, as he and Mary left with the mechanism.

Bobbie stopped the taxicab which carried them half a block east of the office building which was their goal.

"Mary, I will take this machine up on the floor above Trubus' office, and hide it in the hall. Then you go to your place in the office and I will manage a way to draw Mr. Trubus out in a hurry. We will work together after that, and spread the electric trap for him."

Mary went direct to the office, where she found Trubus storming about angrily.

"What do you mean by staying nearly two hours out at luncheon time?" he cried. "I am very busy and I want you to be here on duty regularly, even if my wife did foolishly intercede in your behalf, young woman."

"I am sorry – I became ill, and was delayed. I will not be late with you again, sir."

The president of the Purity League retired to his sanctum, slightly mollified. Mary had not been at her post long when a messenger came in with a telegram.

"Mr. Trubus!" he said, shoving the envelope at her.

She signed his book, and knocked at the door. There was a little delay, and the worthy man opened it impatiently. "I do not want to be interrupted, I am going over my accounts."

She handed him the telegram, and he tore it open hastily.

"What's this?" he muttered in excitement. Then he went back for his silk hat, and left, slamming the door of his private office and carefully locking it.

"I wonder what took him out so quickly?" thought Mary. But even as she mused Bobbie Burke came into the outer office, with the precious machine wrapped in yellow paper.

"What took Trubus out, Bobbie?" she asked, as she helped him arrange the machine behind the wastebasket, near the telephone switchboard.

"Just a telegram, signed 'Friend,' advising him to watch the men who came in the front door, downstairs, for ten minutes, but not to visit Clemm's office. That will keep him away, and he can't possibly guess who did it."

"But, look, Bob, he has locked his door with a peculiar key. If you force it he will be able to tell."

"I thought he might do as much, Mary. I wouldn't risk tampering with the lock. Instead, I found an empty room on the floor above. I have a rope, and I will take the receiver of your father's machine with the disc, and part of the wiring which I had already cut. There is no fire escape from the floor above for some reason. He will suspect all the less, then, for he would not think of anyone coming through the headquarters on the floor below. I will go down hand over hand, you shove the wire under the door to me, and I'll attach it. Then I'll go up the ladder, and we'll let the dictagraph do its work."

Thus it was accomplished. Mary covered the machine and its wiring in the outer office, although several times she had to quit at inopportune times to answer the telephone, or make a connection.

Burke, from the room above, climbed down hurriedly, adjusted the instrument as he had been told to do by John Barton. Then he was out, barely drawing himself and the rope away from the window view before Trubus entered.

Mary thought that it was all discovered, but breathed a sigh of relief when the president opened the door and entered without a remark.

It was lucky for Burke that the day was so warm, for the president had left the window open when he left, otherwise Burke could not possibly have carried out his plan so opportunely.

The telephone bell rang. Mary answered and was greeted by Bob's voice.

"Is it you, Mary?" he exclaimed hurriedly.

"Yes."

"Then start your machine, for I saw this man Shepard go upstairs to the floor beneath you."

"All right, Bob," said Mary softly.

"When the records are run out, unless I telephone you sooner, call one of the girls to take your place, tell her you are sick, and smuggle out the records – don't bother about the machine, we'll get that later. I will be downstairs waiting for you."

"Yes. I understand."

The time dragged horribly, but at last the hour had passed, and Mary wrapped up the precious wax cylinders and hurried downstairs.

Bob was pacing up and down anxiously.

"Shepard has eluded me. I was afraid to leave you, and he took an auto, and disappeared over toward the East Side. I have telephoned Captain Sawyer to have a phonograph ready for us. Come, we'll get over to the station at once. I hope your records give us the clue. If they don't, I'm afraid the trail is lost."

They hurried to the station house. In the private office of the Captain they found that officer waiting with eagerness.

"What's it all about, Bob?" he cried. "Why this phonograph?"

"It will explain itself, Captain," answered 4434. "Let's fix these records in the regular way, and then we will run them in order."

They did so in absolute silence. The Captain listened, first in bewilderment, then in great excitement.

"Great snakes! Where did you get those? That is a conversation between a bunch of traffickers. Listen, they are buying and selling, making reports and laying out their work for the night."

"Sssh!" cautioned Bob. "There's something important we want to get."

Suddenly Mary gripped his hand.

"That's Shepard's voice. I'd never forget it."

They listened. The man told of the condition of Lorna, mentioning her by name now. She had returned to consciousness, and was detained in the room of a house not five blocks from the police station.

"I'll break her spirit now. None of this stage talk any more, Clemm," droned the voice in the phonograph. "When I get my whip going she'll be glad enough to put on the silk dresses. She screamed and cried a while ago, but I'm used to that sort of guff."

"Don't mark her up with the whip, Shepard. That's a weakness of yours, and makes us lose money. Go over now and get her ready for to-night. They want a girl like her for a party up-town to-night. Get her scared, and then slip a little cocaine, – that eases 'em up. Then some champagne, and it will be easy."

Mary began to sob. Burke held her hand in his firm manner.

"Don't cry, little girl, we'll attend to her. Captain Sawyer, this is a record of a conversation we took on a new machine in the offices of the Purity League. It connects with the 'Mercantile' office downstairs, which is a headquarters for the white slave business. Now we know the address of the house where this young girl is kept. Can I have the reserves to help me raid it?"

"Ah, can you? Why, you will lead it my boy. Run out and order four machines from that garage next door. We'll be there in two minutes."

The reserves were summoned from their lounging room with such speed that Mary was bewildered.

"Oh, may I go along?" she begged. "I want to be the first to greet my little sister."

"Yes!" cried Sawyer. "All out now, boys. We'll work this on time. I know the house. It has a big back yard, and a fire-escape in the rear. Half you fellows follow the sergeant, and go to the front – but stay down by the corner until exactly four-thirty. Then break into the front door with axes. The other half – you men in that second file" (they were lined up with military precision in the big room of the station house) – "go with Bob Burke. I want you to go up over the roof. Use your night sticks if there is any gun play, shoot – but not to kill, for we want to send these men to prison."

They started off. Mary's heart fluttered with excitement, with hope. There was something so reassuring about the husky manhood of these blue-coats and the nonchalance and even delight with which they faced the dangers before them.

"Can I go in with them?" she cried eagerly.

"No, young lady, you stay with the sergeant, and sit in the automobile when the men leave it. You're apt to get shot, and we want you to take care of your sister."

They were off on the race to save Lorna!

Now the machines sped down the street. They separated at one thoroughfare, and the men with Burke went down another street to approach the house from the rear. This they did, quietly but rapidly, through the basement of an old house whose frightened tenants feared that they were to be arrested and lynched on the spot, to judge from their terror.

"Keep quiet," said Burke, "and don't look out of the windows, or we will arrest you."

Burke and his men peered at the building which was the object of their attack. The fire escape came only down to the second story.

"Well, you fellows will have to give me a boost, and I'll jump for the lower rungs. Then toss up one more man and I'll catch his hand. We can go up together. You watch the doors."

At exactly four thirty they dashed across the yard, scrambled over the fence, and like Zouaves in an exhibition drill, tossed Burke up to the lowest iron bar of the fire escape. He failed the first time. He tumbled back upon them. The second time was successful. Patrolman White was given a lift and Burke helped to pull him upon the fire-escape.

"Up, now, White! We will be behind the other fellows in the front!"

They lost not a second. It was an ape-like climb, but the two trained athletes made it in surprising time.

As they reached the top of the building a man scrambled out of the trap which led from the skylight.

"Grab him," yelled Burke.

White did so. This was prisoner number one.

Down the ladder, through the opening Burke went and found himself in a dingy garret, at the top of a rickety stair-case. He heard screams. He descended the steps half a floor and peering from the angle, through the transom of a room which led from the hall, he saw a fat old woman standing with her hands on her hips, laughing merrily, while Shepard was swinging a whip upon the shoulders of a screaming girl. Her clothes were half torn from her back, and the whip left a red welt each time it struck.

Downstairs Burke heard the crashing of breaking doors. The raid was progressing rapidly. Burke dashed down to the floor level and flung himself upon the locked door. The first lunge cracked the lock. The second swung the door back on its hinges.

He half fell into the room.

As he did so Lorna Barton saw him and in a flash of recognition, screamed: "Oh, save me, Mr. Burke!"

She staggered forward, and Shepard missed his aim, striking the fat woman who squealed with pain.

"I've got you now!" cried Burke, rushing for the ruffian with his stick.

"No, you haven't!" hissed Shepard, a fighting animal to the last. He had whipped out a magazine gun from his coat pocket, and began firing point-blank. Burke threw his stick at the man, but it went wild.

His own revolver was out now, and he sent a bullet into the fellow's shoulder.

Shepard's left arm dropped limply. He dashed toward the door and forced his way past, firing wildly at such close range that it almost burst the gallant policeman's ear drums.

Up the ladder he scurried like a wild animal, firing as he climbed.

Burke was right behind him.

Shepard ran for the fire-escape. Burke was after him. Each man was wasting bullets. But as Shepard reached the edge of the roof Burke took the most deliberate aim of his life, and sent a bullet into the villain's breast.

Shepard gasped, his hands went up, and he toppled over the cornice to the back yard below.

He died as he had lived, with a curse on his lip, murder in his heart, and battling like a beast!