The little tube was fascinating, and although there was no one in the next room yet, I could not resist the desire to keep on looking through it.

“Since you are so interested, Walter,” laughed Craig, “we’ll appoint you to take the first shift at watching.  Meanwhile we may as well eat since we shall certainly have to pay.  When you are tired or hungry I’ll take a turn.”

Kennedy and I had been taking turns at watching through the detectascope while Miss Kendall told us more about how she had come to be associated with the organization to clean up New York.

“We have struck some delicate situations before,” she was saying, “times when it meant either that we must surrender and compromise the work of the investigation or offend an interest that might turn out to be more powerful than we realized.  Our rule from the start was, ‘No Compromise.’  You know the moment you compromise with one, all the others hear it and it weakens your position.  We’ve made some powerful enemies, but our idea is that as long as we keep perfectly straight and honest they will never be able to beat us.  We shall win in the end, because so far it has never come to a show-down, when we appealed to the public itself, that the public had not risen and backed us strongly.”

I had come to have the utmost confidence in Clare Kendall and her frank way of handling a ticklish yet most important subject without fear or prudishness.  There was a refreshing newness about her method.  It was neither the holier-than-thou attitude of many religionists, nor the smug monopoly of all knowledge of the social worker, nor the brutal wantonness of the man or woman of the world who excuses everything “because it is human nature, always has been and always will be.”

“We have no illusions on the subject,” she pursued.  “We don’t expect to change human nature until the individual standard changes.  But we are convinced of this—­and it is as far as we go and is what we are out to accomplish—­and that is that we can, and are going to, smash protected, commercialized vice as one of the big businesses of New York.”

“Sh-h,” cautioned Kennedy, whose turn it happened to be just then to watch.  “Someone has just entered the room.”

“Who is it?” I whispered eagerly.

“A man.  I can’t see his face.  His back is toward me, but there is something familiar about him.  There—­he is turning around.  For Heaven’s sake—­it’s Ike the Dropper!”

We had already recounted to Miss Kendall our experiences in following Dr. Harris to the black and tan joint and the meeting with Ike the Dropper.

“Then Ike the Dropper is the collector for the police or the politicians higher up,” she exclaimed under her breath.  “If we learned nothing more, that would be enough.  It would tell us whom to watch.”

Hastily we took turns at getting a good look at Ike through the wonderful little detectascope.  Then Kennedy resumed his watch, whispering now and then what he saw.  Apparently Ike had proceeded to make himself comfortable in the luxurious surroundings of the private dining-room, against the arrival of the graft payers.