u've got a right to know. I'm in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"The kind you make money out of with your Relief Pills."

"Milly! Milly!" cried the quack, in honest distress. "I wouldn't have
believed it of you."

"Yes: it's terrible, isn't it!" mocked the girl. "What are you going to
do about it? It's up to you."

"Up to me?" queried the Doctor, bracing himself for what was coming.

"Don't you promise, with your Relief Pills to get women out of trouble?"

Dr. Surtaine's breath came a little easier. Perhaps she was not going to
force the issue upon him by mentioning Hal. If this were diplomacy, he
would play the game.

"Certainly not! Certainly not!" he protested with a scandalized air.
"We've never made such a claim. It would be against the law."

"Look at this." She held up in her left hand a clipping, showing a
line-cut of a smiling woman, over the caption "A Happy Lady"; and
announcing in wide print, "Every form of suppression relieved. The most
obstinate cases yield at once. Thousands of once desperate women bless
the name of Relief Pills."

"I don't want to look at it," said the Doctor.

"No, I guess you don't! It's from the 'Clarion,' that clipping. And the
Neverfail Company that makes the fake abortion pills is _you_."

"It doesn't mean--that. You've misread it."

"It _does_ mean just that to every poor, silly fool of a girl that reads
it. What else can it mean? 'The most obstinate cases'--"

"Don't! Don't!" There was a pause, then:

"Of course, you can't stay in the Certina factory after this."

A bitter access of mirth seized the girl. The sound of it

"rang cracked and thin,
Like a fiend's laughter, heard in Hell,
Far down."

"Of course!" she mocked. "The pious and holy Dr. Surtaine couldn't have
an employee who went wrong. Not even though it was his lies that helped
tempt her."

"Don't try to put it off on me. You are suffering for your own sin, my
girl," accused the quack.

"I'll stand my share of it; the suffering and the disgrace, if there is
any. But you've got to stand your share. You promised to get me out of
this and I believed you."

"_I_! Promised to--"

"In plain print." She tossed the clipping at him with her left hand. The
other she held in her lap, under a light wrap which she carried. "And I
believed you. I thought you were square. Then when the pills didn't
help, I went to a doctor, and he laughed and said they were nothing but
sugar and flavoring. H