'Ze man is mad, lunatic!' And she disappeared with that delicious shrug of the shoulders that had captivated the States.
Insensate fury overcame him. What! This creature who owed all this glory to his dragging her away from the London Ghetto Theatre, this heartless, brazen minx who had been glad to nestle in his arms, was to mock him like this, was to elude him again! He made a dash after her; the doorkeeper darted from his little room, but was hurled aside in a swift, mad tussle, and Elkan, after a blind, blood-red instant, found himself blinking and dripping in the centre of the stage, facing a great roaring audience, tier upon tier. Then he became aware of a pair of eccentric comedians whose scene he had interrupted, and who had not sufficient presence of mind to work him into it, so that the audience which had laughed at his headlong entrance now laughed the louder over its own mistake.
But its delightful moment of sensational suspense was brief. In a twinkling the doorkeeper's vengeful hands were on the intruder's collar.
'I want Yvonne Rupert!' shrieked Elkan struggling. 'She is mine—mine! She loved me once!'
A vaster wave of laughter swept back to him as he was hauled off, to be handed over to a policeman on a charge of brawling and assaulting the doorkeeper.
V
As he lay in his cell he chewed the cud of revenge. Yes, let them take him before the magistrate; it was not he that was afraid of justice. He would expose her, the false Catholic, the she-cat! A pretty convert! Another man would have preferred to blackmail her, he told himself with righteous indignation, especially in such straits of poverty. But he—the thought had scarcely crossed his mind. He had not even thought of her helping him, only of the joy of meeting her again.
In the chill morning, after a sleepless night, he had a panic-stricken sense of his insignificance under the crushing weight of law and order. All the strength born of bitterness oozed out as he stood before the magistrate rigidly and heard the charge preferred. He had a despairing vision of Yvonne Rupert, mocking, inaccessible, even before he was asked his occupation.
'In a cigar-box factory,' he replied curtly.
'Ah, you make cigar-boxes?'