It was rumoured that they were going to close Jeff Hankins'. They were going to close Mike McDonald's. They were going to banish the Washington Park race track.
"They can't do it," declared Gaylord Ravenal.
"Oh, can't we!" sneered the reformers. Snick-snack, went the bars on Hankins' doors and on Mike McDonald's. It actually began to be difficult to find an open game. It began to be well-nigh impossible. It came to such a pass that you had to know the signal knock. You had to submit to a silent scrutiny from unseen eyes peering through a slit somewhere behind a bland closed door. The Prince Alberts grew shiny. The fine linen showed frayed edges. The diamonds reposed unredeemed for longer and longer periods at Lipman's or Goldsmith's. The Ravenal ring and the succession of sealskin sacques seemed permanently to have passed out of the Ravenal possession. The malacca stick, on the other hand, was now a fixture. It had lost its magic. It was no longer a symbol of security. The day was past when its appearance at Lipman's or Goldsmith's meant an I O U for whatever sum Gay Ravenal's messenger might demand. There actually were mornings when even the Cockeyed Bakery represented luxury. As for breakfast at Billy Boyle's! An event.
The Ravenals' past experience in Chicago seemed, in comparison with their present precarious position, a secure and even humdrum existence. Ohio and Ontario streets knew them for longer and longer periods. Now when Magnolia looked into the motley assemblage of
