"I know," she replied, "because I have been there. I know because I myself bought four girls there!" The company gasped its surprise. "I told them I was 'in the business' in Seattle," the speaker continued. "I told them I wanted to buy. I asked for four girls--four young girls. They sold me four for one hundred dollars each." There was a silence for a long moment. It was broken by Marvin Lattimer. "Impossible!" he exclaimed. Mary looked at him sadly. "There is one fact more impossible than that, Mr. Lattimer," she said. "It is that men of the world like you--men who, above all others, should make it their business to know these things,--cry out 'Impossible!' when such a fact is exhibited before you in all its hideousness." "You should have had the man who sold those girls arrested," blurted Grove Evans. "I did," replied Mary quietly, "and _The Reporter_, in which you are a part owner, suppressed publication of the fact. I had the man arrested and Jim Edwards, the politician who holds the district in the hollow of his hand, prevented the case from going to trial. That man walks the streets of Chicago free and without bond." The girl turned to Dr. Brattle again. "Doctor," she said, "you are a clergyman. You are the shepherd of the flock. Are you, too, deaf to the appeal that goes up daily from the sinks of this city,--from hundreds of ruined girls? Do you, too, stand by while wolves rend the lambs? Do you deny the existence of the wolf?" "We can only strive to educate these women, to teach them the error of their way," pleaded the shepherd. "But, doctor, while you are educating one, the wolves are tearing down twenty. They 'educate,' too, and their facilities are better than yours." The girl stopped breathlessly and, stooping swiftly, kissed her aunt. There were tears in her eyes. "Don't worry about me," she said. Then suddenly she crossed the room and threw open the door. The maid, Anna, stood there with a satchel at her feet and Mary's cloak upon her arm. Mary picked up the satchel and turned toward the street door. "The time for theory alone is over," she said, addressing the company. "Someone has got to go into action against the wolves." The door swung behind her and she stepped out into the boulevard. CHAPTER X THE ADVENTURES OF A NEWSPAPER STORY Great cities thrive on sensations. The yellow journal with its blatant enthusiasms and its brazen effrontery finds a congenial habitat there, not because it is brazen, nor even because it is enthusiastic, but because it supplies a community need. The screaming headline is a mental cocktail. Bellowed forth by a trombone-lunged newsboy, it crashes against the eye, the ear and the brain simultaneously. It whips up tired nerves. It keys the crowd to the keen tension necessary for the doing of the city's business. And the crowd likes it. Fed hourly on mental stimulants, it becomes a slave to its newspapers.