Traffic In Souls Part 17

"If there were more men like you, Doc, there wouldn't be so much hypocrisy, and there would be more real good done. Anyhow, I believe I'll look up this angelic Trubus to see what he's like."

He took up his night stick and started for the door.

"I've spent too much time in here, even if it was at the captain's orders. Now I'll go out and earn what the citizens think is the easy money of a policeman. Good night."

"Good night, my lad. Mind what I told you, and don't let those East Side goblins get you."

Burke had a busy night.

He had hardly been out of the house before he heard a terrific explosion a block away, and he ran to learn the cause.

From crowded tenement houses came swarming an excited, terror-stricken stream of tenants. The front of a small Italian store had been smashed in. It was undoubtedly the work of a bomb, and already the cheap structure of the building had caught the flames. Men and women, children by the dozen, all screeched and howled in a Babel of half a dozen languages as Bob, with his fellow officers, tried to calm them.

The engines were soon at the scene, but not until Bob and others had dashed into the burning building half a dozen times to guide the frightened occupants to the streets.

Mothers would remember that babies had been left inside--after they themselves had been brought to safety. The long-suffering policemen would rush back to get the little ones.

The fathers of these aliens seemed to forget family ties, and even that chivalry, supposed to be a masculine instinct, for they fought with fist and foot to get to safety, regardless of their women and the children. The reserves from the station had to be called out to keep the fire lines intact, while the grimy firemen worked with might and main to keep the blaze from spreading. After it was all over Burke wondered whether these great hordes of aliens were of such benefit to the country as their political compatriots avowed. He had been reading long articles in the newspapers denouncing Senators and Representatives who wished to restrict immigration. He had seen glowing accounts of the value of strong workers for the development of the country's enterprise, of the duty of Americans to open their national portal to the down-trodden of other lands, no matter how ignorant or poverty-stricken.

"I believe much of this vice and crime comes from letting this rabble into the city, where they stay, instead of going out into the country where they can work and get fresh air and fields. They take the jobs of honest men, who are Americans, and I see by the papers that there are two hundred and fifty thousand men out of work and hunting jobs in New York this spring," mused Bob. "It appears to me as if we might look after Americans first for a while, instead of letting in more sc.u.m. Cheap labor is all right; but when honest men have to pay higher taxes to take care of the peasants of Europe who don't want to work, and who do crowd our hospitals and streets, and fill our schools with their children, and our jails and hospitals with their work and their diseases, it's a high price for cheap labor."

And, without knowing it, Officer 4434 echoed the sentiments of a great many of his fellow citizens who are not catering to the votes of foreign-born const.i.tuents or making fortunes from the prost.i.tution of workers' brain and brawn.

The big steamship companies, the cheap factory proprietors and the great merchants who sell the sweat-shop goods at high-art prices, the manipulators of subway and road graft, the political jobbers, the anarchistic and socialistic sycophants of cla.s.s guerilla warfare are continually arguing to the contrary. But the policemen and the firemen of New York City can tell a different story of the value of our alien population of more than two million!

CHAPTER VIII

THE PURITY LEAGUE AND ITS ANGEL

In a few days, when an afternoon's relief allowed him the time, Officer 4434 decided to visit the renowned William Trubus. He found the address of that patron of organized philanthropy in the telephone book at the station house.

It was on Fifth Avenue, not far from the windswept coast of the famous Flatiron Building.

Burke started up to the building shortly before one o'clock, and he found it difficult to make his way along the sidewalks of the beautiful avenue because of the hordes of men and girls who loitered about, enjoying the last minutes of their luncheon hour.

Where a few years before had been handsome and prosperous shops, with a throng of fashionably dressed pedestrians of the city's better cla.s.ses on the sidewalks, the district had been taken over by shirtwaist and cloak factories. The ill-fed, foul-smelling foreigners jabbered in their native dialects, ogled the gum-chewing girls and grudgingly gave pa.s.sage-way to the young officer, who, as usual, when off duty, wore his civilian clothes.

"I wonder why these factories don't use the side streets instead of spoiling the finest avenue in America?" thought Bob. "I guess it is because the foreigners of their cla.s.s spoil everything they seem to touch. Our great granddaddies fought for Liberty, and now we have to give it up and pay for the privilege!"

It was with a pessimistic thought like this that he entered the big office structure in which was located the headquarters of the Purity League. Bob took the elevator in any but a happy frame of mind. He was determined to find out for himself just how correct was Dr.

MacFarland's estimate of high-finance-philanthropy.

On the fourth floor he left the car, and entered the door which bore the name of the organization.

A young girl, toying with the wires of a telephone switchboard, did not bother to look up, despite his query.

"Yes, dearie," she confided to some one at the other end of the telephone. "We had the grandest time. He's a swell feller, all right, and opened nothing but wine all evening. Yes, I had my charmeuse gown--the one with the pannier, you know, and----"

"Excuse me," interrupted Burke, "I'd like to speak to the president of this company."

The girl looked at him scornfully.

"Just a minute, girlie, I'm interrupted." She turned to look at Bob again, and with a haughty toss of her rather startling yellow curls raised her eyebrows in a supercilious glance of interrogation.

"What's your business?"

"That's _my_ business. I want to see Mr. Trubus and not _you_."

"Well, nix on the sarcasm. He's too busy to be disturbed by every book agent and insurance peddler in town. Tell me what you want and I'll see if it's important enough. That's what I'm paid for."

"You tell him that a policeman from the ---- precinct wants to see him, and tell him mighty quick!" snapped Burke with a sharp look.

He expected a change of att.i.tude. But the curious, shifty look in the girl's face--almost a pallor which overspread its artificial carnadine, was inexplicable to him at this time. He had cause to remember it later.

"Why, why," she half stammered, "what's the matter?"

"You give him my message."

The girl did not telephone as Burke had expected her to do, according to the general custom where switchboard girls send in announcement of callers to private offices.

Instead she removed the headgear of the receiver and rose. She went inside the door at her back and closed it after her.

"Well, that's some service," thought Burke. "I wonder why she's so active after indifference?"

She returned before he had a chance to ruminate further.

"You can go right in, sir," she said.

As she sat down she watched him from the corner of her eye. Burke could not help but wonder at the tense interest in his presence, but dismissed the thought as he entered the room, and beheld the president of the Purity League.

William Trubus was seated at a broad mahogany desk, while before him was spread a large, old-fashioned family Bible. He held in his left hand a cracker, which he was munching daintily, as he read in an abstracted manner from the page before him. In his right hand was a gla.s.s containing a red liquid, which Burke at first sight supposed was wine. He was soon to be undeceived.

He stood a full minute while the president of the League mumbled to himself as he perused the Sacred Writ. Bobbie was thus enabled to get a clear view of the philanthropist's profile, and to study the great man from a good point of vantage.

Trubus was rotund. His cheeks were rosy evidences of good health, good meals and freedom from anxiety as to where those good meals were to come from. His forehead was round, and being partially bald, gave an appearance of exaggerated intellectuality.

His nose was that of a Roman centurion--bold, cruel as a hawk's beak, strong-nostriled as a wolf's muzzle. His firm white teeth, as they crunched on the cracker suggested, even stronger, the semblance to a carnivorous animal of prey. A benevolent-looking pair of gold-rimmed gla.s.ses sat astride that nose, but Burke noticed that, oddly enough, Trubus did not need them for his reading, nor later when he turned to look at the young officer.

The plump face was adorned with the conventional "mutton-chop" whiskers which are so generally a.s.sociated in one's mental picture of bankers, bishops and reformers. The whiskers were so resolutely black, that Burke felt sure they must have been dyed, for Trubus' plump hands, with their wrinkles and yellow blotches, evidenced that the philanthropist must have pa.s.sed the three-score milestone of time.

The white gaiters, the somber black of his well-fitting broadcloth coat of ministerial cut, the sanctified, studied manner of the man's pose gave Burke an almost indefinable feeling that before him sat a cleverly "made-up" actor, not a sincere, natural man of benevolent activities.

The room was furnished elaborately; some rare j.a.panese ivories adorned the desk top. A Chinese vase, close by, was filled with fresh-cut flowers. Around the walls were handsome oil paintings. Beautiful Oriental rugs covered the floor. There hung a tapestry from some old French convent; yonder stood an exquisite marble statue whose value must have been enormous.

As Trubus raised the gla.s.s to drink the red liquid Bobbie caught the glint of an enormous diamond ring which must have cost thousands.