Kitty Stertz's rooming house was a made-over mansion on the edge of Chica go's ritzy Gold Coast; from the sidewalk it had a deceptive air of faded elegance.
Inside, the elegance had long ago faded out of sight. It was badly furnished and amazingly overcrowded. Landlady Stertz was a greedy, bulky, granite-faced woman who, on hot Chicago nights, would snooze sweatily naked on the parlor couch.
When 20-year-old Betty Ackerman, a waitress from Menominee, Mich, arrived there Last June, she paid Mrs. Stertz $7.50 a week for a small room which she snared...
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