Dazed with fear she started up, acting blindly on the primitive instinct to fly; and in another moment, doubtless, would have thrown herself boldly from the cab to the sidewalk, had her companion not seized her by the forearm and by simple force compelled her to resume her seat.
"Be still, you little fool!" he told her sharply. "Do you think that
I'm going to let you go a third time? Not till I'm through with you….
And if you scream, by the powers, I'll throttle you!"
XIV
RETRIBUTION
She sank back, speechless. Anisty glanced her up and down without visible emotion, then laughed unpleasantly,—the hard and unyielding laugh of brute man brutishly impassioned.
"This silly ass, Maitland," he observed, "isn't really as superfluous as he seems. I find him quite a convenience, and I suppose that ought to be totted up to his credit, since it's because he's got the good taste to resemble me…. Consider his thoughtfulness in providing me this cab! What'd I've done without it? To tell the truth I was quite at a loss to frame it up, how to win your coy consent to this giddy elopement, back there in the hall. But dear kind Mis-ter Maitland, bless his innocent heart! fixes it all up for me…. And so," concluded the criminal with ironic relish,—"and so I've got you, my lady."
He looked at her in sidelong fashion, speculative, calculating, relentless. And she bowed her head, assenting, "Yes—"
"You're dead right, little woman. Got you. Um-mmm."
She made no reply; she could have made none aside from raising an outcry, although now she was regaining something of her shattered poise, and with it the ability to accept the situation quietly, for a little time (she could not guess how long she could endure the strain), pending an opportunity to turn the tables on this, her persecutor.
"What is it," she said presently, with some effort—"what is it you wish with me?"