keynote of this place; yet even that has its interesting side. Where else
do you see it so developed? Where else could you see the same emotion
actuating a number of very different people in an altogether different
manner?"

"For an adventuress," I remarked, "you seem to notice things."

"No one in the world, except those who live by adventures, ever has any
inducement to notice things," she retorted. "That is why amateurs are such
failures. One never does anything so well as when one does it for one's
living."

"The question is arguable," I submitted.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Every question is arguable if it is worth while," she agreed carelessly.
"Look at all those people coming in!"

"I don't understand it," I confessed. "These places are against the law,
yet there seems to be no concealment at all! Why aren't we raided?"

"Raids in this part of London only take place by arrangement," she assured
me. "This place will reach its due date sometime, but every one will know
all about it beforehand. They are making a clear profit here of about four
hundred pounds a night and it has been running for two months now. When
the raid comes Mr. Rubenstein--I think that is his name--can pay his five-
hundred-pound fine and move on somewhere else. It's wicked--the money they
make here some nights!"