“Assault.” John Cabot directly faced the shopman. Humor twitched his mouth as he asked: “Did you think I let you hit me for my own selfish pleasure?”
As the motor patrol purred its way to the station house, however, the amusement faded from his face. The Fall air whipped his longing for the gentler zephyrs of Spring, for the breath of apple-blooms, for the sound of a flute playing Mendelssohn’s vaguely passionate theme.
He forced himself back to certain troubleful questions of the moment. The manikin, Dolores Trent—what of her? The very strength of his desire to find her advised that he should not look for her. Why favor himself as a trailer, while jailing Seff? But where would she hide herself—what do?
CHAPTER VII
Morning in a land of endless twilight!
The spirit-girl lay late abed after that first awakening in Gehenna, as she realized with the switching off of the mauve curtains which had shut sunrise from her chamber. On her show of weariness after last night’s ordeal, she had been told how King Satan, after his preference for the customs of Earth, had time apportioned into periods of day and night, with eventide and dawn, midnight and noon exactly fixed. By means of his electric sun, moon and attendant stars, supplied from the power accumulators on the eastern and western fringes of the Gehennan desert, the semi-light shed from the eternal radiance of the Elysian Fields was made to seem negligible.
Dolores had been grateful for the respite. The shades about the court, she had noted, looked more or less material according to their naturalization into Shadow Land. She herself had been declared unusually visible, even for a new-comer, and was expected to have the habits of her late estate. She had not slept the sleep of Earth, any more than she had tasted the suggestion-foods of last night’s banquet, except as a reminiscence of taste. And yet, with eyelids closed against sight of what was, and her inner vision limited to only the dearest of what had been, she had passed into a sort of soul-rest—into memories and imaginings that were one fond, commingled dream of John Cabot.
Further aroused by a subservient voice, she sank an elbow into the damask-sheened pillow; lifted herself; opened eyes and mind to the now.
“Your shower is turned on, m’lady.”
The repetition was in English. Before, the same words had been spoken in French. Such perfect intonation in two languages piqued her interest. She glanced around to see standing beside her couch a woman-shade in the black and white of service.