On realizing that she had been taken for a customer, Dolores’ spirits lifted. She glanced hopefully down at her threadbare blue serge suit. That daybreak pressing must have rejuvenated it more than she had thought. “I came in answer to this.” She produced the want-ad. Insult was added to the floor-walker’s obvious sense of injury when a woman clerk, elaborately coiffed, made comment from the nearest counter: “You might have guessed her as the one last victim for Juke Seff’s slaughter of innocents.” His face twisted in the very process of smiling. However, he managed--and just in time--to frown. “One flight up,” he said curtly to Dolores. “Turn to the right and----” “To the wrong, deary,” corrected the coiffed clerk. “Then go away, ’way back and down, down, _down_.” Following directions, Dolores found herself in a large room which appeared to be a modified sort of office, furnished in gray wicker, with hangings of gray and purple chintz. As every chair and settee was occupied, she backed to the wall near the door. Surprised to see how many applicants had preceded her, she began to make comparisons. Every shade of complexion, from ash blond to raven-brunette, was represented. Glancing among them, she might have envied some their loveliness and fashionable clothes, had she not so sincerely admired them. Like a flower garden the aggregation looked and smelled, every girl contributing her favorite color and perfume of sachet or extract to the steam-heated air. With all her appreciation, Dolores’ heart grew heavy. Gone was her hope in the quiet distinction of her felt sailor hat, gone her assurance that the advertisement was the sign-board of Fate. Closer to the wall she shrank when, at precisely half-after-ten, Vincent Seff entered the room. CHAPTER IV There was no mistaking him. None less than the owner of the shop would enter with that assured step, and glance among them with that odd mixture of aesthetic distaste, yet business interest. His manner announced that they were “goods” to him. Seff was a man of certain attractions, somewhere in the later thirties. Clothed in semi-belted homespun, his lines were so defined as to suggest stays beneath. He was of medium height, clean-shaved and almost pallid of face. His brown hair he wore somewhat tousled, probably to hide its scantiness over the crown. By the time he had reached the center of the room, the girls had straightened and begun to smile and chatter--all, perhaps, except Dolores Trent. She watched him with the detached interest of her dead hope. Halting, he threw up his delicate hands in an affectation of bewilderment. “Oh, my dears!” he exclaimed, but in a voice lacking animation. “I shouldn’t have believed there was so much innocence in Gotham. Really, I am all but overcome.” Despite the assertion, his eyes swept this corner and that.