Wicked, Wicked Women by Gardner Fox - Chapter 08

1961 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Historical Fiction

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Men like Mike Gannon and Black John Bennett made their living off the Erie Canal, forever battling one another for control of canal shipping.

Women like Moira Kennally—the wanton widow turned Madam -- and the Egyptian, owner of the notorious pleasure parlor, The Golden Tassel - made their living off men like Mike and Black John, offering their passionate embraces in return for the hard-earned dollars the canalers wrested from "The Big Ditch."

Together and apart they lived and loved in a mad search for power and pleasure during one of the most turbulent eras in the mainstream of American life.

You can download the whole story from the Fox Library.

CHAPTER EIGHT 

Silver candelabra made the crystal-ware glisten as if filled with rainbow colors in the parlor of her suite. The console table had been spread with a white tablecloth and set for a dinner à deux. In the hall, the caterer had set up his serving tables. It was five minutes to nine o'clock on the first Saturday of August. 

Moira Creegan sat at her vanity bench staring at her reflection in the triple mirrors. A gown of apricot velvet, low-cut to show smooth white shoulders and the upper swells of her bosom, clung to her tightly at waist and hips. When she moved, the velvet caught light from the gas lamps and candles and appeared to gleam. A pearl choker about her throat, a pearl bracelet and a single large pearl ring gave her an aura of elegance. 

Just this way might she have dressed for a fashionable dinner party back in Rome at the Creegan house on Depeyster Street. In one sense she found it more exciting to be so dressed, rather than to be wearing a thin linen wrapper, the way Lily had with Mike in this same suite of rooms. If Frank Bannerman wanted her, he would have to make a play for her. She was a little too proud to tumble into his arms like a streetwalker. 

When she heard the hall door open into the parlor she rose and left the bedroom, walking with her left hand holding the sweeping velvet skirt, her right hand out stretched. "Frank! So good of you to come." 

He kissed the palm of her hand, smiling faintly. "Moira, Moira. You must be jesting. Haven't you understood at all how very much I've looked forward to this night for the past two years? Wild horses couldn't have kept me away.” 

"You flatter me, dear.” She turned and rather breathlessly indicated the magnum of champagne in the ice bucket, but the society man was not so easily dismissed. 

He came up behind her, pressing close, his arms about her middle and his lips on her bared shoulder. "How very much I've needed this night. How very, very much. And at the moment I find myself extremely selfish. I'm not even going to ask how you feel. Pleasant enough for me is the fact I'm here with you in my arms." 

Moira admitted that the arms banding her middle were not unexciting. She had not been near a man since the long-ago service of the summons in her court action; perhaps this was the reason why her breasts filled out hard and swollen when she felt his strength against her. 

She turned, whether to speak or not she never clearly knew. His mouth was there waiting and at its touch her own mouth loosened and went slack, then was mashed flat before the fury of his kiss. She moaned a little as his hand slid around behind her hips to urge her against him. His tongue came thrusting and, as if it possessed a will of its own, her own stabbed out to meet it. They clung together for many moments before his arms released her. 

"I think I'm dreaming,” he whispered, kissing the tip of her nose. "I've had dreams like this before, you know. And always at a certain point, they faded out and I woke up in an empty bed.” 

She could not stop the slamming of her heart nor still the trembling of her legs. She half laughed, leaning her soft belly to him. "Tell me when your dream would stop, darling. I'll see if I can put a proper ending to it." 

"Moira, Moira!” he cried, bringing her against him again, raking his lips across her shoulders and down to the exposed flesh of her breasts above the apricot velvet bodice. "I adore you. I worship you. There's never been another woman like you. Not Cleopatra or Delilah or Venus herself.” 

Her fingertips traced his lips. "You say such nice things. What else would these lips say if I filled you with champagne?"

"Try me," he laughed, and released her. 

They sipped the golden liquor by candlelight, close together on the Belter sofa. Moira Creegan had never been more provocative, Bannerman told himself. An aura of perfume drifted about her shoulders. Her laughter, as it rang out, was husky, sensual. And her eyes! Ah, her eyes were feverish and promising. 

Conversation neither speeded nor lagged between them. They spoke of the fire which had destroyed the Hotel Richmond, of the commission which had been recently appointed to report on a possible State barge canal. Work projects were promised on the canals. to deepen the Erie and Oswego waterways to a depth of nine feet. All this and other things they chatted over, with a sense of timelessness which neither slowed nor hurried their speech. 

They ate the steak and salad, still in that same mood of inevitability. Moira felt the champagne working in her veins like some strange opium of the spirit, heightening her sense of floating in a vacuum. Beneath her gown her thighs were pressed close together. In mock symbolism of a lost virginity? Only two men in all her life had known the secrets of her woman's flesh—her dead husband Richard, and Mike Gannon. Now a third man was soon to know her intimately. 

She had no need to be reticent. Right now she wanted Frank Bannerman to know the hidden beauty of her body. Lazily she wanted to sprawl out before him temptingly, drive him mad with glimpses of her flesh, with the erotic wisdom she had gained in a lifetime. There would be no fight in her. If anything, she would do all she could to please this man. 

Her full red mouth quirked in a languid smile. She pushed her chair back and rose to her feet, coming around the corner of the little table. Impish delight bubbled in her as she saw the pleased surprise come to life in his eyes as she sat across his thighs. 

She tilted his head back and pressed her open lips to his mouth. Her soft thighs wriggled gently as she squirmed closer, so that he might know the full magnificence of her breasts. Ah! Now he was responding to her. Fully alive, his breath was scratching in his throat and his palms were sliding down her back and across her hips. 

Her teeth nipped his earlobe, then his throat. Breathing warmth against him, without speaking. Stir him, rouse him! Yes. Like this, groaning and trying to get her velvet gown down off her shoulders, face flushed red and eyes oddly glazed. Seeing him so helpless before her teasings filled Moira Creegan with a sense of power. 

She laughed and was halfway across the room before Frank Bannerman could bring his gaze to focus. He stood up, big and strong in his immaculately tailored evening clothes. On silent feet he came across the thick Turkish carpet. 

She tried to run but he was too close behind her. His arms went under her armpits and to the front of the apricot dress. "Frank,” she whispered, looking down at the fingers busily engaged in gripping the material firmly. "It's a brand new dress.” 

The sound of the seams parting scratched at their nerves. Moira felt a little of the pressure against her swollen breasts give way as they surged upward into the black lace of her undergarment. Black lace on smooth white flesh, with the nipples proudly erect; only for an instant did she see them before his hands came up to cover, to hold them 

“This is a part of my dream, my dear."

"Is it, Frank?" 

"Ah, yes. And this, too. Gently-oh, so very gently I draw down the lace until you are all out in the open in the candlelight.” 

"You have such wonderful dreams, darling."

“This is only the beginning," he breathed. 

The tumult of sensation within her body was at full flood now. His hands and then his lips were teaching her a madness which she had shared only with Mike Gannon in the past. 

Mike? Oh damn him all to hell! 

He and Lily in the chair. She closed her eyes and turned her face to rest her cheek against Bannerman's shirt front. Some of the eagerness had gone out of her, she realized and she squeezed her eyes shut to fight the tears that threatened to come storming past her eyelids. If only it were her big Irishman here, pleasing her this way! But she had lost Mike Gannon forever. He had hurt her too deeply. Filled with her sense of loss, she understood suddenly that her pride had been injured; and because of that injured pride, she felt the need to establish herself as a desirable woman in her own mind.

"Do you like me like this, Frank?" she whispered. 

"Can't you tell?” 

“Yes. Yes, I can. But I want it in more than words, in more than just a saying so. I want—” 

What did she want? Her head shook helplessly back and forth. Savagely she refused the insistent thought that even as Frank Bannerman caressed her breasts, she wanted Mike Gannon. 

Damn you, Mike. Ah, damn you! 

She cursed softly, tears filling her eyes. Bannerman, noting how disturbed she was, thought it was because of his searching, stroking hands and gently caressing lips. Elation rose within him. She was finally showing the passion of which she was capable. 

To further rouse that desire, he drew her down beside him on the Belter sofa and now his hands were sliding under the long velvet skirt and up the stockinged legs to her naked thighs, stroking them with wanton insistence. 

"Don't tease me anymore," she whimpered. 

"This is all a part of my dream, darling. You remember I told you about it?” 

“Yes, but—”

His head bent and his lips searched her soft flesh. 

Her hands caught his head and held it still. With eyes wide open she stared upward at the blank white ceiling. "Frank, I never realized a man like you could have so much hunger for a woman." 

"Don't you like that hunger?”

“Yes! Oh, yes.” 

He said no more words but his hands and his lips were adding to the fire in her flesh, and she cried out softly and then more harshly as the flames of that fire grew and grew within her. The apricot velvet dress was rumpled in torn strips beneath her. The black lace undergarments were shredded, peeled back on either side. 

There was no more protest in her, for she had made up her mind that she would belong to this man ever since the night-forget Mike! Forget him and Lily! Enjoy this moment as Mike had enjoyed those moments in the Morris chair! 

She reached out and drew him to her and let him bring an ecstasy of forgetfulness into her mind and her body. Drive out Mike Gannon, her mind screamed at him. Purge him from my senses. Let me belong to you, utterly and without thought. Make me yours, Frank Bannerman! With this rocking, writhing craziness, buy me forever. 

As your woman.

Your mistress. 

The Golden Tassel went right on doing business as usual when The Egyptian left. She walked out on an early afternoon, her chin held high, taffeta umbrella-skirt rustling to her every step, half a dozen porters carrying her trunks and bulging valises. Moira stood at a window of her parlor and watched her step into the waiting gig which would take her to the Lehigh Valley depot, already planning the entertainment for the evening. 

Emotions were mixed in Moira Creegan. Nine years ago she had walked into this building an unknown, without a job. Penniless. Now she was sole owner. True, there was a big mortgage on it, but Frank Bannerman had waved a hand and told her to forget it. 

Yet she would not forget it. She would pay it off as swiftly as she could. She let the curtain fall and turned away from the gig bearing The Egyptian out of her life. Her hand went to the bell-pull.

“Send Penelope to me, Tansy," she told her maid. 

Penelope Drayman was a new girl, eager and alert for money. Born in a boarding house just off The Terrace, she had come early to understand that a man would pay money to enjoy the embraces of an attractive woman; and Penny was attractive. Short and slim, but with a firm, large bosom and shapely legs, she had wandered into The Golden Tassel two days after its opening night, hunting a job. 

Moira had taken an immediate liking to her. Nor, in the days that followed, had she seen fit to change her mind. Penny liked money as much as she did herself, and was always coming to her with ideas on how to enlarge the scope of her operations. A suggestion Penny had made some weeks before had remained in her mind. When she lay sleepless at night, Moira turned it over mentally, developing and enlarging upon it. 

A footfall swung her toward the door. Penny came in smiling, gesturing at the window. "She's pulled stakes at last. You're the boss now."

Moira smiled faintly. “Then you're boss number two, honey. I need somebody to help me run this place. I think you'd be a good choice. Naturally, you'll get a big increase in salary." 

"You really mean it?" the shorter girl squealed. Then her face darkened. "If it means an office job, I don't want it. I'd die if I couldn't get out on that stage and—” 

“I still perform, don't I? And I run the whole shebang. No, you can perform as much as you want. If you'd like a special number to star you, dream one up and we'll talk it over. Fair enough?”

“More than fair, Moira.” 

"Good, it's settled. I wanted to see you about something else, though. A couple of weeks ago you suggested fixing up some private rooms upstairs where a small group of rich men might enjoy themselves in privacy." 

"You like the idea, then?” 

"Mmmm, of course. But I have an even better plan. We'll have your private rooms, all right, but we'll add a larger room, a sort of replica of the big room downstairs. We have plenty of space, now that Lily's gone. A private club for special members, at a thousand dollars a year dues.” 

Penny pursed her red mouth and her eyes grew wide. "You'll make a fortune!” 

"Isn't that what we want?” Moira wondered. 

To be not only a mistress for Frank Bannerman but a rich mistress. Is this your goal in life, Moira Creegan? No, not quite. All she had done, she did with her daughter in mind, that she might not have to walk in her life the same steps Moira had walked in hers. 

She sighed and looked at Penny. "How's Pam and her boyfriend? They still as much in love as ever?” 

Penny said, "She's a stupid fool. I tell her, but she won't listen. Her Kenneth this, her Kenneth that. Doesn't the simpleton know 'her Kenneth' is from Chippewa Street and will marry a girl from his own class, not a—" 

"Go ahead, Penny. Say it. Not a whore. They say the truth hurts. You don't starve to death from the truth, nor die of thirst." 

Penny said, as if to cheer her, "Well, at least Dotty's going to get married. She's been sporting an engagement ring this past week.” 

"No! Tell me all about it. Here, sit down."

She took an intense interest in her girls, suffering with them when love appeared to turn its back on them, rejoicing when they were happy. 

Dottie Alford was a farm girl, big and blond and buxom, who had wandered into Canal Street five years before. An unhappy love affair, a baby born to her and sold by her to a childless married woman for ten dollars in Utica, brought her into Canal Street hunting a job. Moira always felt a sort of kinship with her because of that fact, remembering the days of her own disappointments while job-hunting here in Buffalo. 

Lately, Dottie had met a young canawler who owned his own barge. They were young and lonely, and Moira often had seen them sitting at a table just staring into each other's eyes and holding hands. 

"Now Bill wants to marry her. Dottie says yes but she doesn't want him on the canal any longer. Says she wants him to be a farmer with her. Bill, he wants to buy a canal boat and start his own line.” 

"And?” 

Penny smiled. “They're both being pretty stubborn. Who knows which'll win out? Then there's that young copper who comes to the back door nights, asking for a date with any girl who'll go out with him. He walks them up and down the street. Never touches the girls, just talks to them." 

“Isn't that odd?” 

"Not half so odd as what he asks each and every one of them. I've talked to all our girls who've gone out with him. Olive, Hortense, Betsey, Prue. They all report the same thing. Sometime during their walk he wants to know if they've ever seen a striped cow.” 

"A striped cow?” exclaimed Moira. 

Penny nodded. "Umm-hmmmm. None of the girls laugh at him though. He's kind of sad about it, they tell me.” 

“But what in the world—why's he want to know that?" "Nobody knows, and he won't tell.” 

"Send him in to see me, next time he comes. Maybe I can worm his secret out of him." 

"All right, consider it done. Anything else?” 

Moira waved her away. She wanted time to think, alone and by herself. There were details about her private club which she needed to work out. As she went over them mentally, she found her thoughts distracted by the problems facing Pam Ulrich and Dottie Alford. Oh, yes. 

And the policeman who asked about a striped cow. 

The days fled into weeks and, slowly, the dream of a private club on the upper floor of The Golden Tassel took on three dimensions. Carpenters and plumbers were once again at work, and when they were done, Moira brought Frank Bannerman to inspect their work, 

A round dais covered with black velvet in the middle of the room caught the eye at once. Above it a chandelier was hung so that it beamed a solid circle of light all around the upraised stage. Tables and chairs—thirty in all—were so arranged that every diner would have a perfect view of what happened on the stage. Narrow strips of black velvet radiated outward from the dais like spokes from a wheel. Down these strips would come the waitresses and the entertainers. 

"My God, woman," enthused Bannerman. "This is fabulous!" 

"You really like it, Frank? You aren't just saying that to please me? I'd appreciate your honesty. I really would. This is business." 

His arms hugged her slim middle. "A thousand dollars a year," he muttered. “Thirty tables, thirty thousand dollars. Just for the privilege of reserving four chairs at a table in an upstairs room of a Canal Street saloon." 

Moira eyed him from under long, sooty lashes. "In two years, I'll be able to pay off your mortgage. Will I get the business I need?" 

Bannerman chuckled. "I'll name you ten men, not counting myself, who'll put signed checks in your hands on my say-so. And I'll say it for you, honey. I'll spread the word.” 

"Your friends will get their money's worth,” she told him meaningfully. "I won't cheat them. Just make sure they're all healthy when they step inside this place. I don't want anyone keeling over with a heart attack once the show begins." 

A thought made the society man turn, eyebrows lifted. "You aren't going to perform?" 

“Certainly not. And I'm retiring from the stage downstairs. I've found a replacement who'll make the boys forget me. Penny. You know her." 

"I'm going to tell you something, Moira. I'm glad as hell you've made this decision." 

"You don't want me showing your friends in public what they know you enjoy in private." 

He cleared his throat. "Something like that.”

Moira smiled and patted his hand. 

Two days later, when she went looking for Penny to tell her that the costume sketches were ready for the seamstresses, Moira walked into a room the Drayman girl shared with redheaded Pamela Travis. The doorknob turned in her hand and she was three feet inside the little bedroom before she saw what was hanging by a rope from the gas fixture. 

Moira whimpered, “Oh, no. Oh God—no!” Then she screamed. 

Tansy came running, crying out, “What's the matter, Miz Creegan?” 

Then she, too, began to screech, trying to cover her bulging eyes with trembling fingers. Neither woman could look away from the redhead Pamela Travis, with her neck twisted grotesquely and the thin rope cutting into the soft neck. 

Penny came racing along the hall with Patty Dee at her heels. Penny gave one horrified look at her roommate, then grabbed Moira and a shaking, sobbing Tansy, and dragged them out into the corridor. 

“Get Doc Brenner,” she snapped at a white-faced Patty. "For Moira, not for—for Pam. Nobody can do anything for her. I'll have to send somebody to the Delaware Avenue police station. Come on, Patty. Look alive!” 

The police found a note written in a childish scrawl. 

Tell Kenath I won't make any trouble for him like he is scared of becas this is my weddin presend to him. 

Pam 

Moira lay sleepless all night, unable to drive away the sight of the wry neck and bloated face and bulging eyes of the dead girl. Why? Why? she asked herself over and over again. Why for a man? Any man? There was always another when you lost one. After Richard there was Mike, and after Mike, Frank. 

And after Frank?

No, no more men after Bannerman. She was no longer the innocent who'd walked up the stairs of The Mummy Case and stood before The Egyptian asking for a job. She had money in the bank. She would have a lot more money after the next ten years. She wouldn't need anyone when that happened. Only Kathleen. 

She would always need her daughter. Without her, there would be no goal in life, no reason for staying alive. It was that simple. 

Officer Benjamin O'Hare had never seen Patty Dee before this night. He looked twice at her, hard, wondering if she might be the girl he had been hunting through the long years. He straightened as she walked past him in the corridor just off The Golden Tassel stage, lifting his police hat and making a little bow. 

“Good evening, ma'am.” 

“Oh. You're the patrolman assigned here. I've heard about you," Patty smiled. He was tall and young and handsome in a craggy sort of way. His hair was black, his eyes blue, and there was the trace of a mustache growing on his upper lip. He seemed as friendly as a puppy. 

"I was wondering, ma'am, if we might take a little stroll after—after the show's over. Just the two of us.” 

Patty considered, head tilted to one side. A stroll? Well, why not? There was nothing else to do down here on Canal Street, unless you took a young man to your room. And Mrs. Creegan did not exactly approve of such carryings-on. Of course, if you were careful about it and didn't flaunt your man around in front of everybody, she guessed it was all right. After all, everybody knew Mrs. Creegan entertained that rich society man in her parlor—and bedroom, too—three times a week. 

It was done with such good manners, though. Nobody got screaming drunk or ran out into the corridor without a stitch on, the way Pam—Lord rest her soul!—had done once when her Kenneth was visiting her. No more young men would come to see Pamela Travis. Patty felt like crying. 

"All right,” she said slowly. "I'll go for a stroll. Not far, though. Mrs. Creegan wouldn't like it. Just a little ways.” 

“Naturally," he said stiffly, and looked indignant. 

At the supper table, Patty mentioned her date to Penny Draymen. The older girl said, "Mrs. Creegan wants to see any girl officer O'Hare invites out. When you finish eating, we'll go see her together." 

An hour later, sitting at the console table where she was eating a small repast of boiled ham and baked potato, Moira Creegan explained herself. She sat with legs crossed, her face grave, a look of haunted worry in her eyes. 

"I don't know this young policeman, honey. He may be some sort of sex maniac, with this striped cow—whatever it may be—to trigger off his aberrations. I try to look after my girls. I don't want another tragedy like the one we had with Pam Travis. 

“Oh, no,” exclaimed Patty. "Oh, my, no." 

As she walked with the patrolman through the dimly lighted streets, Patty told herself that Mrs. Creegan had no need to fret about young O'Hare. He was polite and soft-spoken, though big and rugged. Drunks looked at her and opened their mouths to make comments; then they looked at her companion and closed them. It was almost funny, she thought. 

Not until they were standing close to the outer stairs in the backstage alley did he mention the striped cow. "Did you ever see one? Or connect it with anything?” he wanted to know. His eyes were sober, very serious. Though she wanted to giggle, she did not. 

Patty shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I never did much traveling around the country. I was never a farm girl.” “The cow wasn't alive," he said as if to himself. 

Patty put her hand on the banister rail and ran lightly up the stairs. At the landing she leaned over and smiled at him. "I never saw a striped cow but I had one once that was spotted like a leopard. It was stuffed full of cotton and I called it Boofy!" 

“Boofy!” O'Hare said softly. "Oh, my God—yes! That's the name. I've tried so long to remember.” 

He looked absolutely insane, his eyes wild, face as pale as a new petticoat. Patty shrank back, seeing him come up the staircase, two treads at a time. 

"Whats the matter? What is it?" “Are you sure it was spotted? Not striped?” 

She stared at him. “Of course I'm sure. I thought it was beautiful but the nearest I could come to it was 'boofy'. 

"Oh my God. Angela!" 

Angela. Little angel. So long since anyone had called her that, not since she was a very tiny girl, before the big fire and— 

"How did you know my name?" she whispered. 

"I'm Ji! Your brother—you used to call me Ji, remember? You were only three years old. All I could recall about you was the stuffed cow. I thought it was striped." 

The story came out in a spate of words from Benjamin O'Hare and a flood of tears from Angela. They had been five and three years old when the fire claimed their parents. A neighbor had saved them because they slept on the first floor. An uncle had taken Benjamin, but he had never been able to find out what happened to Angela. 

"I lived with a neighbor. I can't tell you why she never gave me to Uncle Theodore. She brought me up. When I was twelve, she died penniless. I got a job on Canal Street. I was pretty. I got money to sing before men and do a dance..." 

Her voice trailed off, remembering the way she had danced with so very little on, and the mustachioed man who had owned the saloon, who had taken her into his office and locked the door and removed her tights and raped her. She had been so ashamed; not because of what the man had done, but of her own reaction to it. She had enjoyed it. She had left the man and gone into The Mummy Case and a job in the chorus line. 

Benjamin O'Hare put his hand over her mouth. “Don't tell me anything more," he pleaded. We're going to build a new life for you, sis." 

"Oh, I couldn't leave Mrs. Creegan. She's counting on—" 

She thought of her part in the stage show Moira was arranging for the Upstairs Club, and flushed. Shame made her tingle. She whispered, head hanging, “You'd better go. Forget me, Ji. I—" 

O'Hare turned and pounded on the door, with Patty clinging to his arm begging him to be silent. He pummeled and kicked the panels until the burly caretaker came and let him in. He demanded to see Moira Creegan at once. 

Moira had been working late in her parlor, but she gathered her satin wrapper closer and made room for them on her Belter sofa. She listened quietly, then smiled radiantly. 

“Of course you can have her, Benjie. Take her away this night. Patty, you go pack your things. At once, do you understand? That's an order." 

Patty was poised between tears and laughter, but she was too long used to obeying this handsome woman whose black hair was so faintly streaked with gray to disobey now. She stood and dropped a curtsy, then ran out. 

Moira went across the room to her safe, opened it and lifted out a packet of hundred-dollar bills. She counted off five of them and gave them to the policeman. "For her dowry, Benjie. But she isn't to know. Not ever. Will you promise me that?” 

He nodded dumbly, staring at the small fortune in his fingers. 

Long after they had gone, Moira Creegan stared into the shadows of her upstairs parlor. Tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Why was there no brother Benjamin in her life, to come like a conquering angel and take her away from Canal Street? 

The Upstairs Club opened on a cool December evening. 

Candlelight, black velvet and haunting music throughout the room from unseen musicians, gave the diners a feeling of unreality. Pretty waitresses in high-heeled button shoes and black silk stockings and a frilly black lace apron—but otherwise unclothed—moved here and there between the tables carrying wine and champagne, Havana cigars, and club sandwiches. Smoke made a haze in the air, almost veiling the performer on the upraised black velvet stage. 

Her name was Zizi. She was French, or pretended to be. Her face was very heavily made up and she stood as rigid as a clothing dummy in a display window, unmoving. Only an occasional blinking of her eyes revealed the fact that she was human. The window dresser—a young man with the face of a matinee idol—was removing her garments one by one. The audience watched breathlessly as her breasts came into view, then the slim, stockinged legs. 

While the window dresser went to another part of the dais and arranged the summer garments in which he was to dress her, the manikin came to life, moving in jerky motions, eyes blinking animatedly. Her face registered surprise as she touched her rigid breasts, the smoothness of her bare thighs. Fear and delight crossed her waxen features. No longer was she a manikin but a living person! 

When the window dresser turned back, the dummy froze, motionless. 

But now as the young man began to dress her, his fingers found that her flesh was soft and warm, no longer hard and cold. Surprise held him, and an impish delight made him grin. He ventured to stroke the smooth flesh of her hip and thigh. The manikin gave a shudder. 

Turning her head gently—Zizi made it seem that she was still a thing of cotton and wires and fabric-he kissed her lips. Jerkily the dummy raised an arm to his shoulder. As if life flowed into her body slowly, she began to respond to his caresses. Little by little the automaton disappeared and the living girl emerged. Now she clung to the young man, kissing him feverishly, letting him lift and carry her across the dais to the couch where her discarded garments had been tossed. She helped him sweep them to the floor then lay back and held out her arms. Quickly, then, the lights winked out. 

When the gas lamps flared on again, the stage was empty. Applause exploded. Men whistled and stamped their feet. The wine girls came running to pour d'Yquem and Montrachet and to have their buttocks pinched and patted. At a rear table, well hidden by shadows, Moira Creegan sat with her hands closed about a brandy snifter. Her eyes were bright and alert. 

Thirty tables—thirty thousand dollars locked in her safe. The Upstairs Club had been an inspiration. She had a waiting list of another dozen names, too. Perhaps, during the summer, she might redecorate and enlarge the room. Forty-two thousand dollars was a lot more than thirty. In two years she would have paid back the sixty thousand it cost to buy off The Egyptian and she would have a profit, besides. 

The gaslights lowered to permit girl slaves in papier-mâche manacles to carry an easel, a painter's table and a studio chair to the dais. For a switch, the model was to be a handsome young man, the artist, an attractive girl. It was a skit designed to revive jaded appetites, as were all the shows enacted on the velvet dais. The heavy-set, wealthy men seated with their mistresses or other friends at the tables, demanded forbidden entertainment of this sort; it was the reason why they parted with a thousand dollars so willingly; they knew Moira Creegan, knew the sort of entertainment she would give them. 

She smiled coldly in the darkness. 

It was an easy way to grow rich, certainly. The men and girls who pantomimed their stage roles were well paid, and had no objections to acting out the parts assigned them. They all knew that along Canal Street, anything went. 

Penny Drayman had talked her into also adding another sideline to the main business of The Golden Tassel. The canal captains who rode the waterway between Albany and Buffalo would pay good money for pretty cooks. At a price, Moira Creegan would rent them cooks. Once on the canal boats, what the girls did was no concern of hers, and if they came back far richer than they left, the money belonged to them. Girls from other establishments along Big Ditch Street flocked to The Golden Tassel to be hired. 

It was as a canal-boat cook that Dottie Alford had met and become engaged to Bill Candell. Their wedding was to take place on the stage of The Golden Tassel three Sundays from now. The Tassel would be closed, of course, except to special, invited guests. The house was open to them as Moira Creegan's wedding present. 

Moira wondered if Kathleen would ever know that her mother was doing to guarantee her future happiness. God! If ever she learned, her world—the world built so painstakingly on ruthlessness and immorality—would come crashing down in shards. No, Kathleen must never know. And she would not know. There was no one to betray Moira Creegan. 

Not even Mike Gannon. Mike continued to see Kathy, bringing her presents, taking her out to dinner at times. Though she hated him for his faithlessness to her, Moira admitted that his visits to Kathy pleased her. At first she had tried to deny him to her daughter, but Kathy would have none of it. "I love Uncle Mike and I'm going to see him whether you like it or not. I look on him as-as my father." Moira had stormed and wept but when Kathleen pinned her down for reasons to justify her sudden animosity, she realized she could not betray Mike without also betraying herself. 

And so, while Kathleen grew into young womanhood she would be fifteen in another few days—she had her mother and her Uncle Mike to share her days and a few of her evenings. She was doing well in school, so well that Moira was determined to send her to France to complete her education. She would be able to afford it. The Upstairs Club alone would more than pay for it in a single year, once the mortgage to Frank Bannerman was redeemed. 

A footfall sounded behind Moira. Penelope Drayman was bending toward her, wearing her costume for the third act, a transparent nightgown and negligee. 

"We've got troubles with Dottie. She's having hysterics." 

Moira came off her chair with a rustle of taffeta undergarments. Fright caught her in a cold grip. Not another Pamela Travis. Oh, dear God—not that!