He dumbly stood aside and opened the door. She hesitated, then gave him her hand.
“Thank you once more. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said he.
She passed out. And the door closed and the bolt clicked into place.
CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING THE MYSTERY OF A PRINCE
IT was a dull room, Drexel’s prison, and Drexel’s presence did not brighten it. To have met and loved and lost a girl all within the space of twenty-four hours, was hardly an experience to make a man enlivening company. Most of the time he lay upon the old sofa, gruffly refusing when Ivan drew out the cards with the purpose of easing his tedium, paying no heed to the young fellow’s chatter, and no heed to the pair’s going and coming. His every nerve throbbed with the anguish of her loss, an anguish that he felt would never leave him.
And added to that anguish was the bitterness of humiliation. Brought up as one among the most exclusive and powerful, he could not escape a pride in his position; nor could he escape the knowledge that in Chicago those wise mothers who could calculate what a man would grow to be in a decade or two considered him the catch of the city. Yet he had been refused by an unknown girl, a girl whose rich clothes, possibly the only good ones she had ever worn, had been admittedly supplied her as a disguise. And more, this girl he loved with all his being had scorned him in scathing words—him and his giant projects.
Certainly enough to gloom any man. But Drexel had yet a further reason for despair. Many a man, refused, even scorned as he had been, had stuck grimly to his suit and in the end won her he loved. But, in faith, how was a lover stubbornly to persevere when there was no loved one against whom to aim his perseverance? Ah, that was the worst of it all—he was never to see her again.
Four more days he lived in this gloomy aloofness, and during this time Ivan and Nicolai settled into a routine management of their task; one would sleep and the other guard, and on two occasions one or the other had left the house for his period off duty. During these days, though there was no abatement of the anguish, Drexel thought often of the utter uselessness of his being held a prisoner. What intention had he of giving the slightest aid toward the capture of Sonya? Would she not be just as safe if he were free?
Plans for escape haunted his mind. But escape was not so easy. True, the one hundred and thirty pounds of either of his captors would have been nothing to his one hundred ninety, but Ivan or Nicolai, whichever it was, always had the black pistol in readiness, and always had his quick eyes upon him. Before he could leap upon his guard, or before he could burst the window and spring out or shout for the police, there would be a deadly bullet in him. Besides, leaping from the window, even should he escape the bullet, would probably mean serious injury upon the cobblestones below; and shouting for help would mean his capture, and the capture of Ivan and Nicolai. He did not wish to involve them in trouble, for he liked the queer pair. And, moreover, this move might endanger the safety of Sonya. No, if he escaped, his escape must bring no risk upon these hostile friends; it had to be an escape from the police as well as from revolutionists.