Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure

Bob started toward the door. A new idea came to him.

"Doctor, I've just thought of something. I saw a picture in the paper to-night of a big philanthropist named Trubus, or something like that, who is fighting Raines Law Hotels, improper novels, bad moving pictures and improving morals in general. How do you think it would do to give him a tip about these fellows? He asks for more money from the public to carry on their work. They had a big banquet in his honor last night."

MacFarland laughed, and took from his desk a letter, which he handed to Bob with a wink. The young officer was surprised, but took the paper, and glanced at it.

"There, Burke, read this letter. If I get one of these a day, I get five, all in the same tune. Isn't that enough to make a man die a miser?"

Officer 4434 took the letter over to the doctor's student lamp and read with amusement:

"DEAR SIR – The Purity League is waging the great battle against sin.

"You are doubtless aware that in this glorious work it is necessary for us to defray office and other expenses. Whatever tithe of your blessings can be donated to our Rescue Fund will be bread cast upon the waters to return tenfold.

"A poor widow, whose only child is a beautiful girl of seventeen, has been taken under the care of our gentle nurses. This unfortunate woman, a devout church attendant, has been prostrated by the wanton conduct of her daughter, who has left the influence of home to enter upon a life of wickedness.

"If you will contribute one hundred dollars to the support of this miserable old creature, we will have collected enough to pay her a pension from the interest of the fund of ten dollars monthly. Upon receipt of your check for this amount we will send you, express prepaid, a framed membership certificate, richly embossed in gold, and signed by the President, Treasurer and Chaplain-Secretary of the Purity League. Your name will be entered upon our roster as a patron of the organization.

"Make all checks payable to William Trubus, President, and on out-of-town checks kindly add clearing-house fee.

"'Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.'" – I Peter, iv. 8.

"Yours for the glory of the Cause,

"WILLIAM TRUBUS,

"President, The Purity League of N. Y."

As Officer Burke finished the letter he looked quizzically at Dr. MacFarland.

"How large was your check, doctor?"

"My boy, I came from Scotland. I will give you three guesses."

"But, doctor, I see the top of the letter-head festooned with about twenty-five names, all of them millionaires. Why don't these men contribute the money direct? Then they could save the postage. This letter is printed, not typewritten. They must have sent out thousands about this poor old woman. Surely some millionaire could give up one monkey dinner and endow the old lady?"

"Burke, you're young in the ways of charity. That old woman is an endowment herself. She ought to bring enough royalties for the Purity League to buy three new mahogany desks, hire five new investigators and four extra stenographers."

The old doctor's kindly face lost its geniality as he pounded on the table with rising ire.

"Burke, I have looked into this organized charity game. It is a disgrace. Out of every hundred dollars given to a really worthy cause, in answer to hundreds of thousands of letters, ninety dollars go to office and executive expenses. When a poor man or a starving woman finally yields to circumstances and applies to one of these richly-endowed institutions, do you know what happens?"

Burke shook his head.

"The object of divine assistance enters a room, which has nice oak benches down either side. She, and most of them are women (for men have a chance to panhandle, and consider it more self-respecting to beg on the streets than from a religious corporation), waits her turn, until a dizzy blonde clerk beckons condescendingly. She advances to the rail, and gives her name, race, color, previous condition of servitude, her mother's great grandmother's maiden name, and a lot of other important charitable things. She is then referred to room six hundred and ninety. There she gives more of her autobiography. From this room she is sent to the inspection department, and she is investigated further. If the poor woman doesn't faint from hunger and exhaustion she keeps up this schedule until she has walked a Marathon around the fine white marble building devoted to charity. At last she gets a ticket for a meal, or a sort of trading stamp by which she can get a room for the night in a vermin-infested lodging house, upon the additional payment of thirty cents. Now, this may seem exaggerated, but honestly, my boy, I have given you just about the course of action of these scientific philanthropic enterprises. They are spic and span as the quarterdeck of a millionaire's yacht."

MacFarland was so disgusted with the objects of his tirade that he tried three times before he could fill his old briar pipe.

"Doctor, why don't you air these opinions where they will count?" asked Bobbie. "It's time to stop the graft."

"When some newspaper is brave enough to risk the enmity of church people, who don't know real conditions, and thus lose a few subscribers, or when some really charitable people investigate for themselves, it will all come out. The real truth of that quotation at the bottom of the Purity League letter should be expressed this way: 'Charity covers a multitude of hypocrites and grafters.' And to my mind the dirtiest, foulest, lowest grafter in the world is the man who does it under the cloak of charity or religion. But a man who proclaims such a belief as mine is called an atheist and a destroyer of ideals."

Burke looked at the old doctor admiringly.

"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 scum. 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 constituents or making fortunes from the prostitution 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 class 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 classes 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 passage-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 class 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 attitude. 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 glass 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 glasses 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 associated 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 passed 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 Japanese 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 glass to drink the red liquid Bobbie caught the glint of an enormous diamond ring which must have cost thousands.

"Well, evidently his charity begins at home!" thought the young man as he stepped toward the desk.

Tiring of the wait he addressed the absorbed reader.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Trubus, but I was announced and told to come in here to see you."

Trubus raised his eyebrows, and slowly turned in his chair. His eyes opened wide with surprise as he peered over the gold rims at the newcomer.

"Well, well, well! So you were, so you were."

He put down his glass reluctantly.

"You must pardon me, but I always spend my noon hour gaining inspiration from the great Source of all inspiration. What can I do for you? I understand that you are a policeman – am I mistaken?"

"No, sir; I am a policeman, and I have come to you to get your aid. I understand that you receive a great deal of money for your campaign for purifying the city, and so I think you can help me in a certain work."

Trubus waved the four-carat ring deprecatingly.

"Ah, my young friend, you are in great error. I do not receive much money. We toil very ardently for the cause, but worldly pleasures and the selfishness of our fellow citizens interfere with our solving of the great task. We are far behind in our receipts. How lamentably little do we get in response to our requests for aid to charity!"

He followed Bobbie's incredulous glance at the luxurious furnishings of his office.

"Yes, yes, it is indeed a wretched state of affairs. Our efforts never cease, and although we have fourteen stenographers working constantly on the lists of people who could aid us, with a number of devout assistants who cover the field, our results are pitiable."

He leaned back in his leather-covered mahogany desk chair.

"Even I, the president of this association, give all my time to the cause. And for what? A few hundred dollars yearly – a bare modicum. I am compelled to eat this frugal luncheon of crackers and grape juice. I have given practically all of my private fortune to this splendid enterprise, and the results are discouraging. Even the furniture of this office I have brought down from my home in order that those who may come to discuss our movement may be surrounded by an environment of beauty and calm. But, money, much money. Alas!"

Just at this juncture the door opened and the telephone girl brought in a basket full of letters, evidently just received from the mail man.

"Here's the latest mail, Mr. Trubus. All answers to the form letters, to judge from the return envelopes."

Trubus frowned at her as he caught Burke's twinkling glance.

"Doubtless they are insults to our cause, not replies to our importunities, Miss Emerson!" he hurriedly replied.

He looked sharply at Burke.

"Well, sir, having finished what I consider my midday devotions, I am very busy. What can I do for you?"

"You can listen to what I have to say," retorted Burke; resenting the condescending tone. "I come here to see you about some actual conditions. I have read some of your literature, and if you are as anxious to do some active good as you write you are, I can give you enough to keep your entire organization busy."

It was a very different personality which shone forth from those sharp black eyes now, than the smug, quasi-religious man who had spoken before.

"I don't like your manner, young man. Tell me what you have to say, and do it quickly."

"Well, yours is the Purity League. I happen to have run across a gang of procurers who drug girls, and make their livelihood off the shame of the girls they get into their clutches. I can give you the names of these men, their haunts, and you can apply the funds and influence of your society in running them to earth, with my assistance and that of a number of other policemen I know."

Trubus rose from his chair.

"I have heard this story many times before, my young friend. It does not interest me."

"What!" exclaimed Burke, "you advertise and obtain money from the public to fight for purity and when a man comes to you with facts and with the gameness to help you fight, you say you are not interested."

Trubus waved his hand toward the door by which Burke had entered.

"I have to make an address to our Board of Directors this afternoon," he said, "and I don't care to associate my activities nor those of the cause for which I stand with the police department. You had better carry your information to your superiors."

"But, I tell you I have the leads which will land a gang of organized procurers, if you will give me any of your help. The police are trying to do the best they can, but they have to fight district politics, saloon men, and every sort of pull against justice. Your society isn't afraid of losing its job, and it can't be fired by political influence. Why don't you spend some of your money for the cause that's alive instead of on furniture and stenographers and diamond rings!"

The cat was out of the bag.

Trubus brought his fist down with a bang which spilled grape juice on his neat piles of papers.

"Don't you dictate to me. You police are a lot of grafters, in league with the gangsters and the politicians. My society cares for the unfortunate and seeks to work its reforms by mentally and spiritually uplifting the poor. We have the support of the clergy and those people who know that the public and the poor must be brought to a spiritual understanding. Pah! Don't come around to me with your story of 'organized traffic.' That's one of the stories originated by the police to excuse their inefficiency!"

Burke's eyes flamed as he stood his ground.

"Let me tell you, Mr. Trubus, that before you and your clergy can do any good with people's souls you've got to take more care of their bodies. You've got to clean out some of the rotten tenement houses which some of your big churches own. I've seen them – breeding places for tuberculosis and drunkenness, and crime of the vilest sort. You've got to give work to the thousands of starving men and women, who are driven to crime, instead of spending millions on cathedrals and altars and statues and stained glass windows, for people who come to church in their automobiles. A lot of your churches are closed up when the neighborhood changes and only poor people attend. They sell the property to a saloonkeeper, or turn it into a moving-picture house and burn people to death in the rotten old fire-trap. And if you don't raise your hand, when I come to you fair and square, with an honest story – if you dare to order me out of here, because you've got to gab a lot of your charity drivel to a board of directors, instead of taking the interest any real man would take in something that was real and vital and eating into the very heart of New York life, I'm going to show you up, and put you out of the charity business – so help me God!"

Burke's right arm shot into the air, with the vow, and his fist clenched until the knuckles stood out ridged against the bloodless pallor of his tense skin.

Trubus looked straight into Burke's eyes, and his own gaze dropped before the white flame which was burning in them.

Burke turned without a word and walked from the office.

After he had gone Trubus rang the buzzer for his telephone girl.

"Miss Emerson, did that policeman leave his name and station?"

"No, sir; but I know his number. He's mighty fresh."

"Well, I must find out who he is. He is a dangerous man."

Trubus turned toward his mail, and with a slight tremor in his hand which the shrewd girl noticed began to open the letters.

Check after check fluttered to the surface of the desk, and the great philanthropist regained his composure by degrees. When he had collected the postage offertory, carefully indorsed them all, and assembled the funds sent in for his great work, he slipped them into a generously roomy wallet, and placed the latter in the pocket of his frock coat.

He opened a drawer in his desk, and drew forth a tan leather bank book. Taking his silk hat from the bronze hook by the door, he closed the desk, after slamming the Bible shut with a sacrilegious impatience, quite out of keeping with his manner of a half hour earlier.

"I am going to the bank, Miss Emerson. I will return in half an hour to lead in the prayer at the opening of the directors' meeting. Kindly inform the gentlemen when they arrive."

He slammed the door as he left the offices.

The telephone operator abstractedly chewed her gum as she watched his departure.