"

"The hell he did! Want me to call a cop?"

"No," replied Susan, who was on her feet again. "What's the use?"

"Those damn cops!" cursed the workingman. "They'd probably pinch
you--or both of us. Ten to one the lobbygows divide with them."

"I didn't mean that," said Susan. The police were most
friendly and most kind to her. She was understanding the ways
of the world better now, and appreciated that the police
themselves were part of the same vast system of tyranny and
robbery that was compelling her. The police made her pay
because they dared not refuse to be collectors. They bound
whom the mysterious invisible power compelled them to bind;
they loosed whom that same power bade them loose. She had no
quarrel with the police, who protected her from far worse
oppressions and oppressors than that to which they subjected
her. And if they tolerated lobbygows and divided with them, it
was because the overshadowing power ordained it so.

"Needn't be afraid I'll blow to the cop," said the drunken
artisan. "You can damn the cops all you please to me. They
make New York worse than Russia."

"I guess they do the best they can--like everybody else," said
the girl wearily.

"I'll help you upstairs."

"No, thank you," said she. Not that she did not need help; but
she wished no disagreeable scene with the workingman's wife who
might open the door as they passed his family's flat.

She went upstairs, the man waiting below until she should be
safe--and out of the way. She staggered into her room,
tottered to the bed, fell upon it. A girl named Clara, who
lived across the hall, was sitting in a rocking-chair in a
nightgown, reading a Bertha Clay novel and smoking a cigarette.
She glanced up, was arrested by the strange look in Susan's eyes.

"Hello--been hitting the pipe, I see," said she. "Down in
Gussie's room?"

"No. A lobbygow," said Susan.

"Did he get much?"

"About thirty-five."

"The ----!" cried Clara. "I'll bet it was Gussie's fellow.
I've suspected him. Him and her stay in, hitting the pipe all
the time. That costs money, and she hasn't been out for I
don't know how long. Let's go down there and raise hell."

"What's the use?" said Susan.

"You ought to 'a' put it in the savings bank. That's what I
do--when I have anything. Then, when I'm robbed, they only get
what I've just made. Last time, they didn't get nothing--but
me." And she laughed. Her teeth were good in front, bu