Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/293

 the social worker, were to feign drunkenness or to indulge in conduct out of keeping with his character, the father was patiently and trustingly to await results. Thereupon they set forth, and before mid-*night visited some thirty houses of ill fame. In the thirty-first house the suspicions of the social worker were confirmed, and, pretending to be intoxicated, he invited an inmate to accompany him, and ascended to the upper floor. He tried the doors along the hall, and finding them all open but one, and that locked, he lurched against it, broke it open, and on entering the room surprised a young woman, entirely nude, who screamed—until he muttered some word of understanding and encouragement. Meanwhile the inmate had summoned madame the proprietress, who flew up the stairs, burst into the room and emptied her revolver at the social worker.

The social worker, at this supreme moment in his recital, paused, and with a weary but reassuring smile, as who should say such adventures were diurnal monotonies in his life, remarked: "with no damage, however, to anything but the furniture and the woodwork."

But he had the girl in his arms, and, thrusting aside foiled madame and the inmate, bore his charge down stairs, snatched a raincoat from the hall rack, wrapped it about her, called to the father to come, and escaped into the street.

After the rescued girl had been restored to her home, and sufficiently recovered from her terrible experience to give a connected account of herself, she related the following incidents: Leaving school on