New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Prostitutes -- Fiction
She stopped. Her case was with the jury.
Dyker rose.
"Cassie!" he called.
Violet leaped to her feet and laid her hands on his arm.
"What are you goin' to do?" she whispered.
He silenced her with a gesture.
"What you want," he said.
Cassie put her black head in at the door.
"Cassie," he continued, flipping the maid another dollar, "I'm a
little off my feed. I'm going to the drugstore on the corner and get
fixed up."
"Thank you, Miste' Dyker.--Ah kin go fer you, Miste' Dyker," said the
negress. "Thank you, sah."
"No, thanks, Cassie, I can go myself; I want the air. But you can do
something else for me. You can just not let this girl run away from
me. I know she would run if she could, but I like her too well to
let her, so if anybody wants her, just you say she's in here and
engaged for the evening by me. I'll be back in fifteen minutes."
He left one door as the willingly assenting Cassie closed the other,
and Violet flung herself on the sofa and buried her face in the
cushions, now fearful that the servant, notwithstanding their
precautions, had overheard her, now afraid that Dyker would change
his purpose and fail to return, and again dreading that he might
betray her to Rose. Since the night she had waited for Max to
telephone in the café, since the terrible morning that had followed,
it was the longest quarter of an hour that she had known, but it at
last dragged its quivering length away. The doorbell rang. Cassie
passed through the room to find Violet sitting suddenly upright, and
at once returned with Dyker, his summer raincoat tossed across his
arm.
As the servant left them, he lifted the coat. Below it, not wrapped
in the paper usual to a new purchase, was a dark cloak. He unrolled
it, uncovered a beaver hat, and handed them both to the panting
Violet.
"Here you are," he said quietly.
She seized them and began to put them on.
"No," he cautioned, "on second thought, I guess I'd better carry
them. The parlor door's open, and Evelyn and Fritzie are in there
with a couple of men. I'll go ahead and open the vestibule door and
the front door. Then you come by as if you were going upstairs."
"Evelyn'll come out to see if I have any money."
"She'll never learn that, though here, by the way, is a ten-dollar
bill that will come in handy.--The doors will be open and I'll be on
the pavement. Keep only a yard behind me. Riley's at the other end
of his beat, and I have a cab at the curb. Ready?"
She could not speak, but she nodded her russet head.
He passed before her up the rosy twilight of the hall.
Violet, following, her lips tight, her breathing suspended, her heart
pounding against her breast, was dimly aware of her own soft
footfalls sounding hideously loud, of the blast of light and laughter
from the parlor.
Dyker flung wide the vestibule door.
"Good-night!" he called to Evelyn.
"Going? Good-night!" Violet heard the Englishwoman answer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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