The strongest ally a man can enlist in any cause is a clear-headed, warm-hearted woman. In all moral causes they form the golden guard of the forces that carry them through. John Marvel's absence when I called to consult him was due to his having got on the trace of Elsa. Another of my friends had also got on her trace, and while I was hesitating and thinking of my reputation, they were acting. As soon as he learned of Elsa's disappearance he consulted the wisest counsellor he knew. He went, with rare good sense, to Eleanor Leigh. He had a further reason for going to her than merely to secure her aid. He had heard my name connected with the affair, and old John had gone to set me straight with her. He did not know of the trouble at the Charity Fair, and Miss Leigh did not enlighten him. Miss Eleanor Leigh, having learned through Marvel that the Loewens were in great trouble, as soon as her school was out that day, went to the Loewens' house to learn what she could of the girl, with a view to rendering all the aid she could. A new force had been aroused in her by John Marvel. Precisely what she learned I never knew, but it was enough, with what she had gleaned elsewhere, to lead to action. What she had learned elsewhere pointed to a certain place in town as one where she might secure further information. It was not a very reputable place--in fact, it was a very disreputable place--part saloon, part dance-hall, part everything else that it ought not to have been. It was one of the vilest dens in this city of Confusion, and the more vile because its depths were screened beneath a mass of gilding and tinsel and glitter. It lay on one of the most populous streets and, dazzling with electric lights, furnished one of the showiest places on that street. It was known as "The Gallery," an euphemism to cover a line of glaring nude figures hung on the walls, which, by an arrangement of mirrors, were multiplied indefinitely. Its ostensible owner was the same Mr. Mick Raffity, who kept the semi-respectable saloon opening on the alley at the back of the building where I had my office. Its keeper was a friend of Mr. Raffity's, by the name of Gallagin, a thin, middle-aged person with one eye, but that an eye like a gimlet, a face impervious to every expression save that which it habitually wore: a mixture of cunning and ferocity. The place was crowded from a reasonable hour in the evening till an unreasonable hour in the morning, and many a robbery and not a few darker crimes were said to have been planned, and some perpetrated, around its marble tables. At the side, in a narrow street, was a private entrance and stairway leading to the upper stories, over the door of which was the sign, "Ladies' Entrance." And at the rear was what was termed by Mr. Gallagin, a "Private Hotel."