"Thank you, Cap," said Bob quietly. "You guessed right both times. It's my first sweetheart." He buttoned his coat and started for the door. "You'd better step around to Doc MacFarland's on your rounds this evening and let him look you over. It won't take but a minute, and I don't expect him around the station. You're not on peg-post to-night, so you can do it." "All right, Cap." Burke saluted and left the station, falling into line with the other men who were marching out on relief. A half hour later he dropped into the office of the police surgeon, and was greeted warmly by the old gentleman. MacFarland was smoking his pipe in comfort after the cares and worries of a busy day. "Any more trouble with the gangsters, Burke?" he asked. Bob, after a little hesitation decided to tell him about the adventure of the night before. "I want your advice, Doc, for you understand these things. Do you suppose there's any danger of Lorna's going out with those fellows again? You don't suppose that they were actually going to entice her into some house, do you?" MacFarland stroked his gray whiskers. "Well, my boy, that is not what we Scotchmen would call a vera canny thought! You speak foolishly. Why, don't you know that is organized teamwork just as fine as they make it? Those two fellows, Baxter, I think you said, and Craig, are typical 'cadets.' They are the pretty boys who make the acquaintance of the girls, and open the way for temptation, which is generally attended to by other men of stronger caliber. This fellow Shepard is undoubtedly one of the head men of their gang. If Jimmie the Monk is mixed up in it that is the connecting link between these fellows and the East Side. And it's back to the East Side that the trail nearly always leads, for over in the East Side of New York is the feudal fastness of the politician who tells the public to be damned, and is rewarded with a fortune for his pains. The politician protects the gangster; the gangster protects the procurer, and both of them vote early and often for the politician." Bob sighed. "Isn't there some way that this young girl can be warned about the dangers she is running into? It's terrible to think of a thing like this threatening any girl of good family, or any other family for that matter." "You must simply warn her sister and have her watch the younger girl like a hawk." MacFarland cleaned out his pipe with a scalpel knife, and put in another charge of tobacco. He puffed a blue cloud before Bob had replied. "I wish there were some way I could get co-operation on this. I'm going to hunt these fellows down, Doc. But it seems to me that the authorities in this city should help along." "They are helping along. The District Attorney has sent up gangster after gangster; but it's like a quicksand, Burke--new rascals seem to slide in as fast as you shovel out the old ones."