“Where did he take her?” asked Clare.

She had broken down the girl’s last fear.

“To that place on the West Side—­that black and tan joint, where Marie Margot came from before the gang took her in.”

“Carton,” called Kennedy.  “You and Walter will take Miss Kendall and Miss Seymour.  Let me see.  Dorgan, Ogleby, and myself will ride in the taxicab.”

Carton was toying ostentatiously with a police whistle as Dorgan hesitated, then entered the cab.

I think at the joint, as we pulled up with a rush after our wild ride downtown, they must have thought that a party of revellers had dropped in to see the sights.  It was perhaps just as well that they did, for there was no alarm at first.

As we entered the black and tan joint, I took another long look at its forbidding exterior.  Below, it was a saloon and dance hall; above, it was a “hotel.”  It was weatherbeaten, dirty, and unsightly, without, except for the entrance; unsanitary, ramshackle, within, except for the tawdry decorations.  At every window were awnings and all were down, although it was on the shady side of the street in the daytime and it was now getting late.  That was the mute sign post to the initiated of the character of the place.

Instead of turning downstairs where we had gone on our other visit, Kennedy led the way up through a door that read, “Hotel Entrance—­Office.”

A clerk at a desk in a little alcove on the second floor mechanically pushed out a register at us, then seeming to sense trouble, pulled it back quickly and with his foot gave a sharp kick at the door of a little safe, locking the combination.

“I’m looking for someone,” was all Kennedy said.  “This is the District Attorney.  We’ll go through—­”

“Yes, you will!”

It was Ike the Dropper.  He had heard the commotion, and, seeing ladies, came to the conclusion that it was not a police plainclothes raid, but some new game of the reformers.

He stopped short in amazement at the sight of Dorgan and Ogleby.

“Well—­I’ll be—­”

“Carton!  Walter!” shouted Kennedy.  “Take care of him.  Watch out for a knife or gun.  He’s soft, though.  Carton—­the whistle!”

Our struggle with the redoubtable Ike was short and quickly over.  Sullen, and with torn clothes and bleeding face, we held him until the policeman arrived, and turned him over to the law.

At a room on the same floor Craig knocked.

“Come in,” answered a woman’s voice.

He pushed open the door.  There was the woman who had fled so precipitately from the dope joint.

Evidently she did not recognize us.  “You are under arrest,” announced Kennedy.

The blonde woman laughed mockingly.

“Under arrest?  For what?”

“You are Marie Margot.  Never mind about your alias.  All the arts of your employees and Dr. Harris himself cannot change you so that I cannot recognize you.  You may feel safe from the portrait parle, but there are other means of detection that you never dreamed of.  Where is Betty Blackwell?  Marie, it’s all off!”