Dan had joined.
On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers,
one of the cards of the new Vigilance Committee was being inspected
with cynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices
in the Searing Building. They studied it with interest, while the
man who had brought it stood by.
"Where'd you pick it up, Cusick?"
"One of our men brought it into the store. Said you might want to
see it."
The three men bent over it.
The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. During
the day two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made a
pretense of business at such times as the door opened, or when an
occasional client, seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates.
At such times the clerks were politely regretful. The firm's
contracts were all they could handle for months ahead.
There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably
professional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls,
waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved
to be accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or less
fluency, with Croats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.
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