'Don't get too involved with this Bruce,' said the mayor. 'Don't be diverted by anyone. Concentrate on the other girls in the Club. They may be doing a little on the side for the Everleighs.'
'I doubt it,' said Karen. 'I'd know.'
'Just make sure, Karen. You're there to do a job. Your job is to get proof that the Everleighs are still running a house of ill fame. If – temporarily – they're not, then you must keep your word and let me know the first minute they give the go-ahead sign.'
'I promise you I will.'
'The important thing is that I've got to have that brothel closed down before the Municipal Voters' League tries to force me to resign – and certainly before the prince of Prussia turns up to see our fair city. Indeed, when he sees Chicago, I want to
be sure it is the fairest city in America. It's up to you, Karen.'
The next day, just after finishing their noon dinner, Karen led Cathleen and Bruce out to Minna's red Ford. Climbing up to the driver's seat, settling herself behind the wheel, Karen waited while Bruce helped his sister into the front seat and took the back seat for himself.
While waiting, Karen recalled how this gathering had come about.
Early in the morning, Edmund had come to Karen's bedroom.
'Miss Grant,' he had said, 'if you are free right now, Miss Minna would like to see you in her office.'
Wondering what this was all about, Karen had said, 'I'm perfectly free.'
She had followed Edmund out of her doorway and downstairs, where she headed for Minna's office.
In the office, Karen had found Minna standing beside her desk, staring off.
'There's something I'd like you to do for me, Karen,' Minna had begun without any preliminaries.
'Anything you wish, Minna.'
'It has to do with my niece and nephew,' Minna had said.
Karen had brightened at once. She had enjoyed being with Bruce at the race course yesterday, and she welcomed any opportunity to be with him again.
'I'd be delighted to do whatever you ask,' Karen had said.
'My nephew Bruce has been pressing me to take him and Cathleen on a tour of Chicago. He wants to see something of the city before he goes back to Kentucky. I keep promising to show him the sights, but I'm really afraid to do so. Someone might recognize me and spill the truth about who I really am. I took a chance going to Washington Park yesterday, but I really had to wear a veil to keep from being recognized, and I'll do so again when the Derby is run. I can't take more chances. Anyway, Bruce told me he'd bumped into you somewhere and you'd offered to take him on a tour. So I thought of you, even though you're fairly new here. At least your face
wouldn't be as familiar as that of one of the other girls. If you would show Bruce and Cathleen the highlights of this city – maybe a few hours – that would get him off my back. Would you consider doing it?'
'Would I?' Karen had said ardently. 'I'd love to do it.'
'Then set it up for this afternoon, and feel free to use my car. I'd appreciate that.'
And so the tour had come to pass, and Bruce and Cathleen were in Minna's Ford with Karen as their guide.
Thinking how to best go about the excursion, Karen decided that she would show Bruce and Cathleen the more expensive residential area first, then the leading major boulevards and parks. After that they would plunge into the downtown Loop.
Karen drove the Ford from Dearborn to Michigan Avenue, and slowly through the green, quiet neighbourhoods of stone mansions owned by millionaires.
'This is the rich residential area of Chicago,' she explained, recalling what she had seen with the mayor. 'There are plenty of poor in the city. But there are these wealthy people also. That brownstone you see, the one with towers, minarets, balconies, belongs to Potter Palmer, the hotel magnate. The rooms are all done in the French style, with Corots and Monets on the walls. There's a ballroom where he once hired the Russian ballet to perform for a party. Palmer's house has two private elevators, and twenty-seven servants. Look over there. That Gothic on the corner is a $60,000 house that belongs to Charles T. Yerkes, who owns the El trains – the elevateds – and the electric trolley cars. I'm told he sleeps in a bed that the king of Belgium used to own.'
After pointing out the $200,000 mansions belonging to Marshall Field, Philip Armour, and George Pullman, Karen tired of all this splendour and turned on to Drexel Boulevard. Again slowing, she showed Cathleen and Bruce the main feature of this drive. It was a magnificent park, 200 feet wide, that paralleled the boulevard, a park thickly ornamented with
walks that wound through trees, shrubbery, plants, and beds of yellow daffodils.
'This leads to Washington Park,' Karen called over her shoulder to Bruce, 'where we went yesterday to see Frontier. I'm glad you're going to run him in the American Derby.'
'Poor man's roulette,' murmured Bruce.
'Maybe,' said Karen. 'Now let me show you some of the bigger buildings your aunts would want you to see, modern landmarks Chicagoans are proud of.'
Twisting through the streets, stopping briefly now and then, Karen showed them the Palmer House Hotel, the sixteen-storey Monadnock Building, which filled an entire block, the Home Insurance Building, the Fine Arts Building in spacious Jackson Park, a park 1,500 acres in size with tennis courts and grazing sheep.
'Now,' said Karen, 'let's see something more interesting – our downtown section known to natives as the Loop. We'll drive there, leave the car, and wander around on foot.'
When they reached the Loop, it proved to be a beehive of humanity and moving vehicles. Above them, like a steel girdle, the tracks of the elevated trains circled the area, pouring almost three-quarters of a million shoppers into the streets daily. The Loop seethed with people dodging automobiles, horse-drawn trucks, buses, and electric streetcars. The din of people talking and walking and of machines whirring and banging was almost deafening.
Karen inched the Ford along, searching and searching for a vacant parking place; at last she found one and eased the auto into it.
Once safely parked, Karen urged Cathleen and Bruce to descend into the bedlam of the street. She told them to follow her. She seemed to have some kind of destination in mind. As they pushed and shoved along, Karen indicated the rumbling elevated that blocked out the sky above them.
'The third elevated line to be installed in the country,' Karen explained. ' New York and Brooklyn had them first.
We followed in time to create mass transportation for the World's Columbian Exposition. A year before the fair, the elevated consisted of a small steam locomotive hauling four wooden coaches. Each olive-green coach was forty-six feet long. Eventually, the Els were converted to electrically powered trains, essentially what you see up there at a second-storey level today.'
Bruce made a mock gesture of covering his ears. 'As a country horseman, I don't know if I could stand all this thunder and confusion on a daily basis.'
'Well, I'm going to show you that we have other diversions,' said Karen. She had come to a halt before a theatre. A sign identified it as the American Music Hall. 'Have either of you ever seen vaudeville?' Karen asked.
'Many times in Louisville,' Cathleen replied.
'Good,' said Karen, 'but today I want you to spend fifteen minutes seeing the best. Have you heard of Joe Cook?'
Neither Cathleen nor Bruce had.
'I've timed our arrival so we can see his performance today.'
'Who is Joe Cook?' Bruce wanted to know.
'A comedian,' said Karen, as she bought three tickets. 'He does what they call a nut act. He satirizes vaudeville. He's marvellous.'
The three of them went into the darkened theatre, which was two-thirds full for the matinee.