Free The Duchess of Skid Row by Louis Trimble

happened to you at the Blue Beagle? You snarled at Arch as if everything was his fault.”
    “It might be at that.” I told her about the trick Hoxey and Teddy had pulled on me.
    “Can they really get away with that?” Stephanie demanded. “I mean, will anyone believe people like this Hoxey even if he has the picture?”
    “Teddy is too smart to pull a stupid gag like that one unless she did know she could get away with it,” I told Stephanie. “That means she must know pretty well where I stand these days. So how did she find out?”
    “Your resignation was in the paper,” Stephanie said.
    I said, “The story on my resignation didn’t tie me up with Johnny’s death or with any other kind of trouble.”
    I shook my head. “She must have inside information. Otherwise she wouldn’t risk bucking the evidence I have on her and Hoxey.”
    Stephanie finished her second cheeseburger. “Just what is this evidence you keep talking about?”
    “Not long after Teddy came home from college, she met Hoxey on a local slumming party. Something about him attracted her. She moved off the hill and down here. She had a little money and she started up the Blue Beagle. But she wasn’t making enough money to satisfy Hoxey. So he cooked up an angle to make more. She was so gone on him that she did what he told her.”
    I took time out to light a cigaret. I said, “He started a camera club.”
    “A what?” Stephanie demanded.
    “You bring your own camera and film. The guy who runs the club furnishes the models and also develops the film for you.” I explained in detail the “art” that was photographed.
    Stephanie’s cheeks turned pink.
    I said, “I broke up Hoxey’s little ring. I managed to confiscate some of the film. I needed a contact on Hill Street, so I made a deal with Teddy and Hoxey. They kept me posted on what went on here; I kept the evidence out of the hands of the Vice Squad.”
    “It sounds like blackmail to me,” Stephanie said.
    “When you fight dirt, you sometimes have to be dirty.”
    I got up. “Let’s get to work.”
    We went up to the corner of Third and back across the street. The weather was bad but not bad enough to keep people away from Nick Calumet’s.
    Teddy had told me that after the well-heeled set left Arch’s place, they came slumming to the Blue Beagle. They also seemed to go in the opposite direction. Calumet’s penny arcade was two-thirds full, and most of the customers were obviously the well-to-do from the north hill.
    I glanced through the archway that led into the big barroom. The crowd there was the kind I expected to see on Hill Street. It was the usual mixture of overdressed women and hard-faced punks. I turned back and watched men in tuxes and women in evening gowns drift through the penny arcade and into the movie section of the place. A foursome was coming out. The men were grinning and the women were trying to appear embarrassed, but without much luck.
    I said, “It looks as if Nick has struck a gold mine.”
    Stephanie teetered on her spike heels. “Which one is he?”
    “He isn’t around. But he’ll turn up fast enough.” I nodded toward an old man behind the news stand counter. “I’ve been spotted. Nick will hear about us any minute now.”
    I took her arm and steered her to the black curtain that covered the entrance to the movie section. We stepped into near darkness. The “movies” were peephole machines each with a tiny light over the front so that the customer could see where to put his money. Some of them had still shots of what the viewer could expect for his dime or his quarter. The machines stood in long rows separated by narrow, almost pitch-dark aisles. There must have been fifty of them. At least half were occupied, some by couples peering at the same machine together.
    I went up to a cubbyhole with an old man behind it. I bought two dollars worth of dimes and quarters. I dumped the money into Stephanie’s coat pocket.
    I said, “Let’s