The Salamander Part 71

"Not to-night!" she said, laughing. Then, pushing back, she added: "Are you through?"

"Not quite."

He rose, took from his pocketbook two bills of a thousand dollars each, and laid them beside her plate.

"What's this for?" she asked, raising her eyes.

"For the pleasure you have given me, Miss Baxter, in permitting me to take dinner with you," he answered, smiling.

"Just for that?" she said ironically.

"Just for that!" he repeated. He drew back toward the window. "You see, it was not so dangerous, after all. If you will get your things now, we shall go!"

Her sense of the dramatic was struck.

"Ah, that's very clever of you!" she said, quite excited. Two thousand dollars just for the favor of dining with her! How subtly he proclaimed what she might expect in the future! The bills were horribly real, seeming to adhere to her fingers. She repeated, wildly stirred: "Very clever!"

He came closer to her, with veiled eagerness.

"Well, what is it to be?"

She left the money on the table, answering quietly:

"You know, don't you?"

"You will--"

"No!--of course!"

He frowned impatiently.

"Think it over!"

"There's no need!"

"How much do you want? Come, tell me!" he said roughly, with a brutality from which the mask had been withdrawn.

She laughed triumphantly at the reappearance of the true Sa.s.soon.

"Ah, I would be very expensive!"

"I don't care!"

"You haven't enough!"

"What!" he cried angrily, trying to seize her wrist. "You are fool enough to refuse? You can have anything you want. I will make you anything!"

"Sa.s.soon, it's the man!" she said scornfully.

He drew back, red with anger.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that everything you have said fills me with horror!" she cried, with a need of self-expostulation. "I wouldn't be you for all the millions in the world! Thank G.o.d, I can be a fool! I can love like a human being! I'd rather give up everything in the world to the man I adore--"

With an exclamation, he sprang toward her, rage and l.u.s.t in his eyes; but, prepared, she flung a chair against his legs and escaped into the drawing-room, slamming the door in his face, and darting from the vestibule into the hall as he came blindly in pursuit. She did not stop until she had descended the flight of stairs. Below, she turned, and perceived his pa.s.sion distorted face glowering down from the upper landing.

"Will you kindly bring my things down, Mr. Sa.s.soon? I'm going now," she said, breathless, but exhilarated by the escape and the victory.

"Come and get them!" he said furiously, and he disappeared.

She frowned, not relishing the turn, calculating how to extricate herself. At length, reluctantly, she descended the second flight, resolved to send a boy up-stairs for her things. The vestibule in which she found herself was a large one with gla.s.s doors opening into the noisy restaurant, played over by an energetic Hungarian orchestra. As she hesitated, conscious of the strange figure she presented, the gla.s.s doors swung hastily and Harrigan Blood came out.

"Dodo! I thought I recognized you!" he cried, stopping short. "What in the name of the incredible--"

She went to him quickly, grasping his arm, actuated by a sudden brilliant plan of revenge.

"Mr. Blood--Harrigan!" she said quickly. "I was brought here by a gentleman who had told me it was to be a party of eight or ten. I have just escaped from the trap he laid for me! Will you give me your arm while I go and reclaim my things?"

"Will I? I'll throttle him!" he said angrily. "The contemptible cur! Who is he?"

"Sa.s.soon!"

"My G.o.d!"

They went up-stairs, and pushed aside the half-open doors. At her entrance, Sa.s.soon turned like a startled animal, his face almost unrecognizable with rage. In his fury he had caught his napkin and torn it into shreds. A couple of chairs were overturned, and the covering of the table pulled down. At the sight of Harrigan Blood striding in with menacing looks, Sa.s.soon checked his first impetuous advance, halting abruptly, murder in his heart.

"I have come for my things, Mr. Sa.s.soon, since you would not bring them to me," Dore said, "and I found a _gentleman_ to accompany me."

"Is it true, what Miss Baxter says?" said Harrigan Blood, clearing the s.p.a.ce that separated them. "Did you bring her here with a lie--to a trap?"

"Mind your own business!" cried Sa.s.soon, with a scream of rage. "Who are you to preach morality to me? You're a fine one to reproach any one, you are!"

"I've done a lot of things in my life," said Blood, with rising wrath, "but I never took a woman with a lie--like a thief! Sa.s.soon, you're a coward and a dirty cur!"

He caught him by the throat in his powerful grip, and slapped him twice across the face; then, as a dog with a rat, he shook him in the air and flung him in a heap against the foot of a chair, where he lay, stunned and gasping for breath. Dodo, with her hat and coat, came out hastily, very much frightened, awed at the sight of men in rage and combat.

"Oh, let's go--let's go!" she cried. "Oh, is he hurt? You've not--"

"Killed him? No, so much the worse!" Blood said scornfully. "Now get away quickly; there must be no scandal!"

Below, on the sidewalk, he placed her in a taxicab, but refused to enter with her.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm a very human person, Miss Baxter; I'm not going in the way of temptation, when I know there's no hope.

It's good-by, young lady!"

"I do like you--I admire you, Mr. Blood," she said, retaining his hand.

"Don't hate me!"