Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/322

 Well, about that time, as it happened, a series of acts of vandalism began to take place in the church. It aroused tremendous indignation, and even the cold, brilliant young lawyer took more than an abstract scholarly interest in the "phenomena." Nothing was stolen—things were merely smashed. It was apparent to him, he said, that the acts were performed by some one who was deficient in the moral sense in a peculiar way—some one who was not so much immoral as non-moral. The elders said, "Moral sense or no moral sense, wait till we get hold of 'em!"

One night the brand-new cushions of the pews were ripped open; another time the pipes of the organ were plugged up. The preacher of the church delivered a sermon about it, and the young lawyer wrote an article about it for the editorial page of one of the papers—one of his fine, analytical masterpieces, which did not stop the dirty work but helped to advertise it. The session despaired of doing anything with detectives; they organized squads of watchers among