CHAPTER XXXIX.
The New Administration Oliver Marchbanks, the youthful fox to whom Stimson had assigned the task of trapping Mr.Sluss in some legally unsanctioned act, had by scurrying about finally pieced together enough of a story to make it exceedingly unpleasant for the Honorable Chaffee in case he were to become the too willing tool of Cowperwood's enemies.

The principal agent in this affair was a certain Claudia Carlstadt--adventuress, detective by disposition, and a sort of smiling prostitute and hireling, who was at the same time a highly presentable and experienced individual.

Needless to say, Cowperwood knew nothing of these minor proceedings, though a genial nod from him in the beginning had set in motion the whole machinery of trespass in this respect.
Claudia Carlstadt--the instrument of the Honorable Chaffee's undoing--was blonde, slender, notably fresh as yet, being only twenty-six, and as ruthless and unconsciously cruel as only the avaricious and unthinking type--unthinking in the larger philosophic meaning of the word--can be.

To grasp the reason for her being, one would have had to see the spiritless South Halstead Street world from which she had sprung--one of those neighborhoods of old, cracked, and battered houses where slatterns trudge to and fro with beer-cans and shutters swing on broken hinges.

In her youth Claudia had been made to "rush the growler," to sell newspapers at the corner of Halstead and Harrison streets, and to buy cocaine at the nearest drug store.