Abashed and frightened, the girl obeyed.
Immediately Butch had the cab in motion, tearing eastward at lawless speed through streets whose long ranks of yawning windows, seen fugitively in the formless dusk of early morning, seemed to look down leering, as if informed with terrible intelligence.
She shut out the sight of them with hands that covered her face until the swift rush of cool air steadied and sobered her, so that she grew calmer in the knowledge that, in veritable fact (and this was all that really mattered) "nobody knew"....
Then, sitting up, she composed herself, and with deft fingers completed the adjustment of her garments. By the time she had finished her toilet, aided by a small mirror inset between the forward windows, Butch was stopping the cab before the East Seventy-sixth Street tenement.
Bending back, he unlatched the door and swung it open.
"You go on up," he ordered. "I'll be around before long—gotta run this machine back to the garage."
Joan stepped quickly to the sidewalk, and shut the door.
"All right," she responded, and added, almost timidly, avoiding her brother's eyes: "Thank you, Butch."
He grunted unintelligibly and, as Joan moved up the stoop, threw in the power again and drew swiftly away down the street.
For an instant Joan held back in the vestibule, sickened to recognize anew the home of dirt and squalor she had fled, a long lifetime since, it seemed, and struggling with almost invincible repugnance for the ordeal awaiting her at the head of those five weary flights.