She laughed.
“You told your chauffeur to go for the police, did you? I’ll tell you something! Your chauffeur is in my kitchen at this moment, having his supper. If you think that he’s likely to leave before you, you don’t know me, Stella!”
He gathered up the dressing-gown that was spread on the divan and slipped his arms into the hanging sleeves. A terrible figure he was in the girl’s eyes, something unclean, obscene. The scarlet pyjama jacket gave his face a demoniacal value, and she felt herself cringing from him.
He was quick to notice the action, and his eyes glowed with a light of triumph.
“Bhag is downstairs,” he said significantly. “He handles people rough. He handled one girl so that I had to call in a doctor. You’ll come with me without—assistance?”
She nodded dumbly; her knees gave way under her as she walked. She had bearded the beast in his den once too often.
Half-way along the corridor he unlocked a door of a room and pushed it open.
“Go there and stay there,” he said. “I’ll talk to you to-morrow, when I’m sober. I’m drunk now. Maybe I’ll send you someone to keep you company—I don’t know yet.” He ruffled his scanty hair in drunken perplexity. “But I’ve got to be sober before I deal with you.”
The door slammed on her and a key turned. She was in complete darkness, in a room she did not know. For one wild, terrified moment she wondered if she was alone.
It was a long time before her palm touched the little button projecting from the wall. She pressed it. A lamp enclosed in a crystal globe set in the ceiling flashed into sparkling light. She was in what had evidently been a small bedroom. The bedstead had been removed, but a mattress and a pillow were folded up in one corner. There was a window, heavily barred, but no other exit. She examined the door: the handle turned in her grasp; there was not even a keyhole in which she could try her own key.