a drunkard reaching for his dram. A hint of a powerful new
thrill lay in the half disclosed first pages. Black headings and
"freaked" makeup meant but one thing--a big story.

And Chicago was not disappointed. Occupying the place of honor on the
first pages of all of the morning sheets was the announcement of a new
assault upon the Vice Trust. To the crowd the name Mary Randall meant
nothing. It knew little of her and cared less. But the idea of a young
girl, beautiful, socially prominent, immensely wealthy in her own right,
declaring war single-handed on a monster so mightily armored and
intrenched and so brutally strong as the Vice Trust appealed instantly to
the crowd's imagination. In the crowd's thought, at least, the girl
became a heroine. And though the man in the street openly wearing an air
of cheap cynicism spoke of her as "another crazy reformer" or as a
"notoriety-hunting crank," secretly he responded to the enthusiasm of the
headline writer who announced her as a "modern Joan of Arc."

Mary had given out the story herself. A simple letter from her to the
city editors announcing that she had left her home and all the luxuries
that such a home implied and, accompanied only by a maid, had set forth
on a war of extermination against the "vice ring" had been sufficient to
set every local room in the city in a frenzy. Re-write men and head
writers had done the rest. Every newspaper recorded the launching of her
adventure with a luxuriance of illustration and a variety of detail that
left nothing more to be said on the subject. Mary had counted rather
shrewdly on this. She possessed, among her other natural gifts, a keen
judgment of news values. She knew, too, the immense power of the press.
By enlisting the agencies of publicity behind her she had multiplied her
forces a thousand-fold. At the end of her letter Mary had written a
modest appeal to the public. Every newspaper printed it under display
type. It read as follows:

"TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CHICAGO.

"Our city, which should be the heart of American honor, is in the grip of
a hideous System. So quietly and surely has this monster worked that our
civic blood is poisoned. It feeds upon youth, innocence and purity--all
that we as decent citizens love best. I call upon you all to stand by me
now in my fight to kill the White Slave Traffic.

"Mary Randall."

Grove Evans read that a