The girl’s words came torrentially. It was as if she dared not pause lest her purpose should fail her. At the finish she confronted the policeman, with her rounded bosom heaving.
“Eight o’clock?” Sinclair nodded. “They’re shipping five hundred gallons?”
Suddenly he laughed. And a look of fear in Annette’s eyes replied to him.
“Ernie!”
But again the policeman laughed.
“Don’t worry, kid,” he cried.
“But they’re desperate. They’ll fight like devils. They’ll shoot to kill. They mustn’t kill you. They——”
“Kill nothing!” the man scorned. “There’ll be no killing. Just penitentiary. I want ’em both. And now I’ll get ’em. And——”
The girl’s hands were prisoned.
The next moment her body was caught in the man’s arms, and Annette submitted to fierce caresses. She submitted but did not respond. A queer desperation seemed to have taken hold of her. It was reaction. And it robbed her of the power to think connectedly. In those moments the one thing she knew was an awful despair, and a pitiful desire to fall a-weeping.