"Thank you, Miste' Dyker.—Ah kin go fer you, Miste' Dyker," said the negress. "Thank you, sah."
"No, thanks, Cassie, I can go myself; I want the air. But you can do something else for me. You can just not let this girl run away from me. I know she would run if she could, but I like her too well to let her, so if anybody wants her, just you say she's in here and engaged for the evening by me. I'll be back in fifteen minutes."
He left one door as the willingly assenting Cassie closed the other, and Violet flung herself on the sofa and buried her face in the cushions, now fearful that the servant, notwithstanding their precautions, had overheard her, now afraid that Dyker would change his purpose and fail to return, and again dreading that he might betray her to Rose. Since the night she had waited for Max to telephone in the café, since the terrible morning that had followed, it was the longest quarter of an hour that she had known, but it at last dragged its quivering length away. The doorbell rang. Cassie passed through the room to find Violet sitting suddenly upright, and at once returned with Dyker, his summer raincoat tossed across his arm.
As the servant left them, he lifted the coat. Below it, not wrapped in the paper usual to a new purchase, was a dark cloak. He unrolled it, uncovered a beaver hat, and handed them both to the panting Violet.
"Here you are," he said quietly.
She seized them and began to put them on.
"No," he cautioned, "on second thought, I guess I'd better carry them. The parlor door's open, and Evelyn and Fritzie are in there with a couple of men. I'll go ahead and open the vestibule door and the front door. Then you come by as if you were going upstairs."
"Evelyn'll come out to see if I have any money."
"She'll never learn that, though here, by the way, is a ten-dollar bill that will come in handy.—The doors will be open and I'll be on the pavement. Keep only a yard behind me. Riley's at the other end of his beat, and I have a cab at the curb. Ready?"
She could not speak, but she nodded her russet head.