Wide Courses Part 24

"N-no--no!"

"You lie, you--" He shifted his grip to her hair and started to drag her along the hall.

Jan stepped softly out, reached his arms round Goles's shoulders, drew them tight against his own chest; and then, holding him safe with his elbows, he ran his fingers down until they felt the knuckles of the other's hands. And then he squeezed. With thumb and forefinger of each hand he squeezed. Jan could pick up a keg of copper rivets with one thumb and forefinger and toss it across the deck of a ship. And now he squeezed. Goles hung on. Jan squeezed. The knuckles began to crack.

"G-g-g--" snarled the other and loosed his grip.

Jan relaxed the grip of his thumb and forefinger, swung the man round, walked to the head of the stairs, raised his left knee, pressed it against the small of Goles's back, shifted his right hand to behind the man's shoulders and suddenly let knee and arm shoot out together. In one magnificent curve, and without touching a step on the way, Goles fetched up on the lower hall floor.

He stood up after a while and made as if to come back upstairs. As he did so Jan made as if to go down.

Goles glared up at him.

"So it is you!"

"Yes, it's me," said Jan. "Come!"

"Come? No! But you wait there, will you? Just wait there and see what happens to you! Wait!" And even as he called that last "Wait!" he was running for the back stairs.

Jan turned to her. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the stair-rail. Her knees were drawn up, and with elbows on knees she was supporting her head in her hands.

"Where is he gone to?" asked Jan.

"I don't know--to get his revolver probably."

Jan bent over to see her face. A great listlessness was all he could read there.

"Would he shoot? Did he ever shoot anybody?"

"Yes--two. But the police never found out. You'd better get out while there's time."

"And won't he shoot you?"

She raised her head to look at him. "No," she answered presently--"not just now. He will some day--that's sure. He promised me that more than once, and he means it; but I don't think he will to-night."

"Then, if ever he meant it, he will to-night," said Jan. "I don't want to get shot; and I'm going. You better come too." She shook her head.

"Yes," He put an arm under her shoulder. "Come."

"No, no. I mustn't."

"But you must." Jan put his other arm under her and lifted her to her feet; but yet she lay heavy, half-resisting. "Come," said Jan. "I'll take you out of here--to my mother."

"Your mother?" she repeated, and straightened up; but almost instantly fell back. "But we can't now!" she whispered.

"Why?" whispered Jan.

"It's too late. Hear him?" Jan heard steps on the landing below; and as he listened and looked the light in the hall below went out. "You can't get out the front door in time now," she said hopelessly.

"There's more ways than front doors to get out of a house. And there's lights to put out up here too." He reached up and turned down the lamp-wick, then blew out the flame. "Come," he whispered, and led her into his room and locked the door.

He groped for the bed, tore off the sheets, twisted them tightly and knotted them together. "There!" he said, and, taking a turn of it under her arms, let her down from the window into the alley. Then he swept into his suit-case a few things from the dresser and snapped it, and dropped it out the window.

He was about to fasten one end of the twisted sheets about the bedpost, to let himself down; but hearing the door-k.n.o.b slowly turning he did not finish the job. He dropped the sheet, lowered himself by his hands from the window-sill and let go. He landed without damage.

"Come," he said, and led the way to the street. At the first corner he turned. At the next corner he turned. At the third corner a cab was in sight. He helped her in.

"Do you know," Jan whispered to her, "a good hotel I could tell him to drive to?"

"With me looking as I am? Why, no. Tell him any hotel we can get into."

Jan addressed the cabman.

"I want"--he said it very distinctly, so that there could be no mistake--"a good hotel to take a lady to."

"A lady? An' a _good_ hotel? Sure thing. Jump in."

Jan got in and sat opposite to her. She was restoring order to her hair.

"Did the cabby laugh?" she asked.

"No. Why should he?"

"Why?" Jan saw that she was staring at him. Suddenly her stare was transformed to a soft smile. "Oh-h--sometimes these cabbies think they're funny."

Presently the cab stopped. Jan looked out. It was a hotel, with a wide door and a narrow one. The narrow door was marked "Ladies' Entrance,"

and through the transom a red light shone.

"Wait," said Jan.

He went through the wide door to the desk. "I want a room for a lady,"

he said to the clerk.

"Lady? Sure. Four dollars."

Jan paid the four dollars and registered. The clerk touched a bell. A boy bobbed up.

"I will bring her in by the ladies' entrance," said Jan; but in pa.s.sing out to the street he caught a glimpse of a room across the hall--a room with tables, and men and women at the tables, and drinks on the tables.

He halted for a longer look and went out to the cab finally with a troubled look.

"There's a room for you, but"--he took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair--"I don't think you ought to stay here." He had put his head inside the cab and was speaking low, so that the cabman should not hear. "I don't think it's a nice place for a lady."

"But"--she almost smiled--"I'm afraid we'll have to put up with it.

Look!" She spread wide her rumpled skirt. Her eyes rolled down to indicate her torn bodice. With her fingertips she touched the bruises on her face and the marks on her neck. "And I haven't even a hat on," she concluded with an undoubted smile.

Jan gave in. He paid the cabman, and led her through the ladies'

entrance to where the bell-boy was waiting. The boy led the way upstairs, opened a door and turned on the light.

"You wait out in the hall," Jan said to the bell-boy. "The lady may want hot water and things to clean up. You know? The lady"--Jan tapped the boy on the shoulder--"fell out of a buggy and lost her hat." He handed the boy a dollar bill. "You understand now?"