Rodrigo clasped an arm about Sophie's shoulder and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yes," she answered, and he wondered if she were really as frightened as she pretended, "but you mustn't leave me. Take me up to my apartment."
He motioned the negro into the elevator and, after some hesitation, the latter slid the mahogany gate open and stood at the lever of the car. At the door of her apartment, Sophie had recovered sufficiently to rummage a key from her handbag. They stepped inside. She switched on the light.
He at once offered a tentative, "Well, my dear, I guess everything is all right now. And I'll say good-night."
She came closer to him and protested, "No—I am still frightened to death. You mustn't leave me here. Those awful men will come back, I know they will."
"Nonsense," he said promptly, "they're more frightened than you are. What we should do is to notify the police."
"Oh, no," she cried. "Christy detests that sort of publicity for anyone in his shows. And it would be bad for you too as a business man."
"Perhaps you're right," he agreed. Then after some hesitation, "I really am going now."
He had anticipated her next move. As she came to him and started to put her arms about him, he gently disengaged them. She stepped back, stared at him and cried, "Oh, you are impossible! You have treated me positively shamefully to-night—leaving me to fight and now refusing to protect me. I think you are contemptible." Flashes of the well-known Binnerian temper were showing themselves.
Rodrigo shrugged his shoulders and smiled, "That's nonsense, my dear. Go to bed and forget it."