He knew something of her work in the First
Ward and that she was beautiful and self-possessed. He was determined
that she should help him. Sitting in the chair and looking at her
across the flat-top desk he choked back into her throat the terse
sentences with which she was wont to greet visitors.
"It is all very well for you to sit there dressed up and telling me
what women in your position can do and can't do," he said, "but I've
come here to tell you what you will do if you are of the kind that
want to be useful."
The speech of McGregor was a challenge which Margaret, the modern
daughter of one of our modern great men, could not well let pass. Had
she not brazened out her timidity to go calmly among prostitutes and
sordid muttering drunkards, serene in her consciousness of business-
like purpose? "What is it you want?" she asked sharply.
"You have just two things that will help me," said McGregor; "your
beauty and your virginity. These things are a kind of magnet, drawing
the women of the street to you. I know. I've heard them talk.
"There are women who come in here who know who it was killed that boy
in the passageway and why it was done," McGregor went on. "You're a
fetish with these women. They are children and they come in here to
look at you as children peep around curtains at guests sitting in the
parlour of their houses.
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