“There’s no one in the house but me and the servants.” Her voice trembled a little before the menacing group on the piazza.
“That’s all right,” said the man. “We’re going to see for ourselves. We saw him come in here.”
He began to edge his way slowly toward the open door and as he moved the pearl handled pistol raised slowly, menacingly, in an even tempo with his slow insolent advance.
“You cannot come in,” said Lily in a slow, firm voice. The pistol was level now with the heart of the intruder. “I’ve told you there is no one here. You might, it seems to me, take the word of a lady. I’ve been here all the evening and I would know....” She raised the yellow backed novel in a brief little gesture. “I’ve been reading. There is no one here but myself.”
The man growled. “That’s all right but we want to look for ourselves.” There was a painful pause. “We’re going to have a look,” he added with determination.
When Lily spoke again there was a new note in her voice, a sudden timbre of determination, a hint of unreasonable, angry, feminine stubborness which appeared to awe the intruder.
“Oh, no, you’re not,” she said. “It is my house. You have no right to enter it. You have no warrant. It is mine. You cannot enter it.” And then, as if by an afterthought she added, “Even my sister is not here. I don’t know this Krylenko. I never saw him.”
The man, it seemed, was baffled. If the woman in the doorway had been the wife of a workman, a simple Italian or Slovak, he undoubtedly would have brushed her aside, shot her if necessary, trampled her under foot the way his comrades had trampled to death the old Polish woman in Halsted street at the foot of the drive. But the woman in the doorway was a lady. She was not a poor foreigner. She was more American than himself. Behind her in the shadows gleamed dully a silver mounted mirror, a chandelier of sparkling crystal. Her fine, beautiful body was clad in a garment of black and silver. On her fingers glittered rings. All these things meant wealth, and wealth meant power. The man, after all, had only the soul of a policeman, a soul at once bullying and servile. For him these symbols might spell ruin. Besides, the woman was hysterically stubborn, strangely unafraid ... so unafraid that her courage carried a hint of suspicious origin. He did not brush her aside nor did he shoot her.
“It’s no use,” she said. “If you return with a warrant, all right. I can do nothing. For the present, it is my house.”
The man turned away and began a low conversation with his companions. He had a sheepish air, and as he talked the door was closed suddenly and locked, shutting him out in the darkness, leaving him no choice in the matter. For a time the little group of men conversed angrily, and presently they went away in defeat down the long drive.