Within a fortnight she had moved again, accepting from Baldwin a beautifully furnished Riverside Drive apartment, a Rolls Royce, and Pearl, a negro maid. Here she took her place among the hundreds of other mistresses who gaze with languorous well-paid eyes across the moon-silvered Hudson.

Her wardrobe was filled with exquisite dresses and gowns. She had her own bank account, as Baldwin deposited a fat check to her credit once a month. Besides that he took her wherever she wanted to go without caring in the least whether he was seen by members of his own set.

The nights he spent with Babe in her apartment—their apartment, as he thought of it—were hours of pure unalloyed happiness passing all too quickly.

The shadow of the black man who had loved her was gradually fading out of Babe’s mind. Baldwin entirely forgot the past, he was so intoxicated by the present. And, as for the future—well, that could take care of itself.

Babe had cast off all the old roughness of her past. She appeared the well-kept lady. No courtesan of the Sixteenth Century was more beautiful than this one of the Twentieth, none more successful in holding a much desired lover.

Little wonder, then, that this was the high moment of Babe’s life. She was nineteen now, and the years when she would have to worry about crow’s-feet and wrinkles were far away.

But the ways of the gods are strange and they give happiness sparingly to humanity. Perhaps they thought Babe’s was unearned happiness. At any rate, they began to weave shadows for her.

Pearl, Babe’s maid, on her nights off was a frequenter of Nigger Gert’s. Pearl, it seemed, loved “corn” and gin. It was there in Gert’s that she raved about the beauty and generosity of her mistress. Cokey Jenny sat and listened, for she, too, often dropped into Gert’s for a drink.

“Goddam the luck!” Jenny thought. “Here they give me two hundred bucks to keep my mouth shut about Babe sellin’ dope, and she ups and grabs off the guy who owns the whole works. A millionaire that makes Money Johnson look like a peddler. Well, if that slut ain’t got a rabbit’s foot.”

She questioned the maid and got Babe’s address and telephone number out of her. Well, Babe would have to come across this time—come across plenty, or . . . A murderous light burned in Jenny’s dope-glazed eyes.

Jenny began her dirty work by calling up Babe’s apartment and trying to get her on the telephone. Babe answered it once and when she recognized Jenny’s voice she pretended she was the maid and said that Miss Gordon was not at home. After that, she instructed Pearl to say that she was out whenever Jenny called up.