The Metropolis

Afterward Toodles turned to listen to Oliver and his companion; and Montague sat back and gazed about the room. Next to him was a long table with a dozen people at it; and he watched the buckets of champagne and the endless succession of fantastic-looking dishes of food, and the revellers, with their flushed faces and fev-

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erish eyes and loud laughter. Above all the tumult was the voice of the orchestra, calling, calling, like the storm wind upon the mountains; the music was wild and chaotic, and produced an indescribable sense of pain and confusion. When one realised that this same thing was going on in thousands of places in this district, it seemed that here was a flood of dissipation that outrivalled even that of Society.

It was said that the hotels of New York,

Elaced end to end, would reach all the way to (Ondon; and they took care of a couple of hundred thousand people a day — a horde which had come from all over the world in search of pleasure and excitement. There were sight-seers and "country customers" from forty-five states; ranchers from Texas, and lumber kings from Maine, and mining men from Nevada. JLt home they had reputations, and perhaps families, to consider; but once plunged into the whirlpool of the Tenderloin, they were hidden from all the world. They came with their pockets full of money; and hotels and restaurants, gambling-places and poolrooms and brothels—all were lying m wait for them! So eager had the competition become that there was a tailoring establishment and a bank that were never closed the year round, except on Sundays.

Everywhere about one's feet the nets of vice were spread. The head waiter in one's hotel was a "steerer" for a "dive," and the house detective was "touting" for a gambling-place. The handsome woman who smiled at one in "Peacock Alley" was a "madame"; the pleas-

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ant-faced young man who spoke to one at the bar was on the lookout for customers for a brokerage-house next' door. Three times in a single day in another of these great caravansaries Montague was offered "short change"; and so his eyes were opened to a new kind of plundering. He was struck by the number of attendants in livery who swarmed about him, and to whom he gave tips for their services. He did not notice that the boys in the wash-rooms and coat-rooms could not speak a word of English; he could not know that they were searched every night, and had everything taken from them, and that the Greek who hired them had paid fifteen thousand dollars a year to the hotel for the privilege.

So far had the specialisation in evil proceeded that there were places of prostitution which did a telephone business exclusively, and would send a woman in a cab to any address; and there were high-class assignation-houses, which furnished exquisite apartments and the services of maids and valets. And in this world of vice the modern doctrine of the equality of the sexes was fully recognised; there were gambling-houses and poolrooms and opium-joints for women, and drinking-places which catered especially to them. In the "orange room" of one of tne big hotels, you might see rich women of every rank and type, fingering the dainty leather-bound and gold-embossed wine cards. In this room alone were sold over ten thousand drinks every day; and the hotel paid a rental of a million a year to the Devon estate. Not far

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away the Devons also owned negro-dives, where, in the early hours of the morning, you might see richly-gowned white women drinking.

In this seething caldron of graft there were many strange ways of making money, and many strange and incredible types of human beings to be met. Once, in Society, Montague had pointed out to him a woman who had been a "tattooed lady" in a circus; there was another who had been a confederate of gamblers upon the ocean steamships, and another who had washed dishes in a mining-camp. There was one of these great hotels whose proprietor had been a successful burglar; and a department-store whose owner had begun life as a 'fence." In any crowd of these revellers you might have such strange creatures pointed out to you: a multimillionaire who sold rotten jam to the people; another who had invented opium soothing-syrup for babies; a convivial old gentleman who disbursed the "yellow dog fund" of several railroads; a handsome chauffeur who had run away with an heiress. Once a great scientist had invented a new kind of underwear, and had endeavoured to make it a gift to humanity; and here was a man who had seized upon it and made millions out of it! Here was a "trance medium," who had got a fortune out of an imbecile old manufacturer; here was a great newspaper proprietor, who published advertisements of assignations at a dollar a line; here was a cigar manufacturer, whose smug face was upon every bill-board — he had begun as a tin manufacturer, and to avoid

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