"My God! It is as I feared!" whispered Turpin to himself. "Summon
your men at once!" he called to the captain. "She is in there, I
know."
At the blowing of the captain's whistle the uniformed plain-clothes
men rushed up the stairs into the pool-room. When they saw the
betting paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and
puzzled to know why they had been summoned.
But the captain pointed to the locked door and bade them break it
down. In a few moments they demolished it with the axes they carried.
Into the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his
heels.
The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin's mind. Nearly a score
of women--women expensively and fashionably clothed, many beautiful
and of refined appearance--had been seated at little marble-topped
tables. When the police burst open the door they shrieked and ran
here and there like gayly plumed birds that had been disturbed in a
tropical grove. Some became hysterical; one or two fainted; several
knelt at the feet of the officers and besought them for mercy on
account of their families and social position.
A man who had been seated behind a desk had seized a roll of currency
as large as the ankle of a Paradise Roof Gardens chorus girl and
jumped out of the window.
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