Her father had been a riveter in a shipyard and had been killed while she was a baby.  Later her mother had married unhappily a man who followed the night paths of the criminal underworld.  Afterward he had done time at Sing Sing.  Through him Annie had been brought for years into contact with the miserable types that make an illicit living by preying upon the unsuspecting in big cities.  Always in the little Irish girl there had been a yearning for things clean and decent, but it is almost impossible for the poor in a great city to escape from the environment that presses upon them.

She was pretty, and inevitably she had lovers.  One of these was “Slim” Jim Collins, a confidential follower of Jerry Durand.  He was a crook, and she knew it.  But some quality in him—­his good looks, perhaps, or his gameness—­fascinated her in spite of herself.  She avoided him, even while she found herself pleased to go to Coney with an escort so well dressed and so glibly confident.  Another of her admirers was a policeman, Tim Muldoon by name, the same one that had rescued Clay from the savagery of Durand outside the Sea Siren.  Tim she liked.  But for all his Irish ardor he was wary.  He had never asked her to marry him.  She thought she knew the reason.  He did not want for a wife a woman who had been “Slim” Jim’s girl.  And Annie—­because she was Irish too and perverse—­held her head high and went with Collins openly before the eyes of the pained and jealous patrolman.

Clay had come to Annie Millikan now because of what she had told him about “Slim” Jim.  This man was one of Durand’s stand-bys.  If there was any underground work to be done it was an odds-on chance that he would be in charge of it.

“I’m askin’ you to stand by a poor girl that’s in trouble,” he said in answer to her question.

“You’ve soitainly got a nerve with you.  I’ll say you have.  You want me to throw the hooks into Jim for a goil I never set me peepers on.  I wisht I had your crust.”

“You wouldn’t let Durand spoil her life if you could stop it.”

“Wouldn’t I?  Hmp!  Soft-soap stuff.  Well, what’s my cue?  Where do I come in on this rescue-the-be-eutiful heroine act?”

“When did you see ‘Slim’ Jim last?”

“I might ‘a’ seen him this afternoon an’ I might not,” she said cautiously, looking at him from under a broad hat-brim.

“When?”

“I didn’t see him after I got behind that ‘How Many?’ sign.  If I seen him must ‘a’ been before two.”

“Did he give you any hint of what was in the air?”

“Say, what’s the lay-out?  Are you framin’ Jim for up the river?”

“I’m tryin’ to save Kitty.”

“Because she’s your goil.  Where do I come in at?  What’s there in it for me to go rappin’ me friend?” demanded Annie sharply.

“She’s not my girl,” explained Clay.  Then, with that sure instinct that sometimes guided him, he added, “The young lady I—­I’m in love with has just become engaged to another man.”