Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Michael McDowell Page B

growing discomfort, “there is in fact a gambling house in Leroy Street that I had intended to visit, where the games are notoriously rigged, and the cheating is blatant.”
    “If I might make a suggestion—” began Duncan deferentially.
    “Yes?”
    “I have a nephew—a strange, ill-formed sort of boy, a kind of perpetual victim. No one, I think, is simpler than Benjamin, and his appearance unmistakably suggests that very quality. He also has the distinction of having lost at most of the gaming tables of this city. He is the ideal dupe to have with us.”
    “Bring him then,” said Simeon Lightner with some little enthusiasm. “We could have no better disguise.”
    “Very good then,” said Duncan Phair. “I might add too that I saw a notice in the columns this morning that Cyrus Butterfield, a colleague and acquaintance of mine, was found murdered last night—robbed, stripped, and stabbed in an alleyway very near Leroy Street. That might possibly be a good place to begin your articles, the very danger to life in the Black Triangle.” Then, in a loud declamatory voice, Duncan Phair intoned: “ ‘Behind the brick and mortar, underneath the garish colored lights, crouches inestimable danger. The shrill cry of the shameful, shameless woman who barters her body covers the rattle in the blood-filled throat—’ ”
    “Well,” said Simeon Lightner, nonplussed by Duncan’s lurid oratory, “I don’t know whether I oughtn’t turn the whole thing over to you, Mr. Phair. I suppose that all your clients are let off?”
    After agreeing to meet Simeon Lightner at ten o’clock at the southwest corner of Washington Square, Duncan took a streetcar uptown to the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, and was pleased to find Edward Stallworth in his study there. They conferred for half an hour, while the weak winter sun shone through the stained-glass windows, painting their faces in strange pale maps of yellow, green, and blue.
    “Of course,” said Duncan, when he had outlined his and Judge Stallworth’s plan in some detail, “we are not soliciting your help in any direct fashion. Your father simply asked me to inform you of our designs so that you might, if you wished, take advantage of them and employ them to your own advancement.”
    “I see,” said the minister politely. Edward Stallworth had listened to all Duncan’s speech with perfectly undisturbed gravity, and Duncan Phair had watched in vain for the single word or movement, the slight change of expression—too sudden a blinking of the eyes, for instance—that would have told him what side of the issue his brother-in-law had decided to take.
    “We imagine,” Duncan went on, a little anxiously, “we hope that in the next few months a great deal of attention will be directed to that area over which your father holds jurisdiction, the crime-ridden streets south of Bleecker, the infamous Black Triangle, encompassing hundreds and perhaps thousands of buildings which house evil, foster shame, and countenance corruption.”
    “Yes,” replied Edward Stallworth blandly to Duncan’s eloquence, “we are in the midst of great iniquities.”
    “Now, I know that you write articles, editorial articles for the Christian Dawning and the Presbyterian Advocate on occasion, and it would possibly not be amiss if you composed a short essay supporting our work in this area or simply pointed out the value of the Tribune articles.”
    “Yes,” said Edward reflectively, “perhaps I could.” He paused, then went on in a manner which suggested that these plans had been the moral center toward which all his thoughts for the past year had irresistibly tended. “The financial support of the African missions is, of course, a worthwhile ideal,” said Edward Stallworth, “and one which has been treated much of late in the Advocate ,and the congregation here has raised several substantial special collections, but it might be well to turn now to a cause which is closer to our