On the morning after Mary Randall's dramatic exit from her uncle's mansion Chicago awoke and clutched at the morning papers with all the eagerness of a drunkard reaching for his dram. A hint of a powerful new thrill lay in the half disclosed first pages. Black headings and "freaked" makeup meant but one thing--a big story. And Chicago was not disappointed. Occupying the place of honor on the first pages of all of the morning sheets was the announcement of a new assault upon the Vice Trust. To the crowd the name Mary Randall meant nothing. It knew little of her and cared less. But the idea of a young girl, beautiful, socially prominent, immensely wealthy in her own right, declaring war single-handed on a monster so mightily armored and intrenched and so brutally strong as the Vice Trust appealed instantly to the crowd's imagination. In the crowd's thought, at least, the girl became a heroine. And though the man in the street openly wearing an air of cheap cynicism spoke of her as "another crazy reformer" or as a "notoriety-hunting crank," secretly he responded to the enthusiasm of the headline writer who announced her as a "modern Joan of Arc." Mary had given out the story herself. A simple letter from her to the city editors announcing that she had left her home and all the luxuries that such a home implied and, accompanied only by a maid, had set forth on a war of extermination against the "vice ring" had been sufficient to set every local room in the city in a frenzy. Re-write men and head writers had done the rest. Every newspaper recorded the launching of her adventure with a luxuriance of illustration and a variety of detail that left nothing more to be said on the subject. Mary had counted rather shrewdly on this. She possessed, among her other natural gifts, a keen judgment of news values. She knew, too, the immense power of the press. By enlisting the agencies of publicity behind her she had multiplied her forces a thousand-fold. At the end of her letter Mary had written a modest appeal to the public. Every newspaper printed it under display type. It read as follows: "TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CHICAGO. "Our city, which should be the heart of American honor, is in the grip of a hideous System. So quietly and surely has this monster worked that our civic blood is poisoned. It feeds upon youth, innocence and purity--all that we as decent citizens love best. I call upon you all to stand by me now in my fight to kill the White Slave Traffic. "Mary Randall." Grove Evans read that appeal through and smiled at its naivete. Then he looked across his office to his partner, William Brierly, a younger man with pompadour hair and an habitual air of immense self-satisfaction. Brierly was reading the same story in another newspaper. He, too, looked up and smiled.