The Monster · Chapter 10 (2/2)

“In the States I did not need to. Here, in Paris, particularly at night, the streets are seldom sure. I have this thing for protection.”

“Promise me then⁠—”

Verplank looked her over.

“Don’t be a fool.”

But as he looked, suddenly she started and he saw that she was trembling.

“What the deuce is the matter?”

Trembling still, peeringly now she had turned to the portières.

“What is it?” he repeated.

“I am so frightened.”

“Frightened? What at?”

Uncertainly, her head drawn back as a deer’s is when surprised, she glanced about her. Slowly then her eyes returned to his.

“I am so frightened!”

“Yes, but at what?”

She motioned at the room. “Before you came there seemed to be something here, something around me and just now⁠—”

“Well?”

“I heard something.”

“Your maid probably.”

With an intake of the breath she raised a finger and for a moment both were silent.

“There is no one,” he presently told her. “And what if there were!”

At the idea, he laughed.

The laugh, succeeding the silence, while intended to reassure her, did not wholly succeed. She turned to him anew and in a low voice, said:

“You must go. Tomorrow come to Violet’s.”

“I dine there tonight.”

“Yes, I know. Tell her that tomorrow, say at three, we will both be with her. Then she can tell us⁠—”

But Verplank had drawn her to him. Again her eyes closed.

“Go,” she said at last.

On the sofa was his hat. He reached for it. While he did so, she moved to the tapestry, raised it, disclosing the stair up which he had come.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said, as he entered there.

She nodded at him. “At three!”

Dropping the tapestry she turned, but very quickly, for again she heard or thought she heard a noise.

Across the room the portières were parting. Through them Barouffski appeared.

“I might have known it,” she told herself, and realising that he had been listening, she realised also that the opportunity was as good as another for making an offer which she had in mind.

These ideas, instantaneous at sight of him, were for the moment stayed. On turning she had seen but the man. Now hastening toward her was a creature with an expression so venomous that instinctively, in search of help, with the idea of calling to Verplank, she turned to the tapestry again.

Quicker than she, he caught and tossed her spinning on the sofa. Then, running to the open window, he shouted from it:

“Emmanuel! The dogs!”

Leilah, falling backward on the lounge, was too stunned to hear. But she steadied herself, recovered, got to her feet and making again for the stair, called at Barouffski:

“Free me from you and you shall have half of what I have.”

“Half!” he repeated. At once he was upon her. “All,” he cried. “I want it all, all of yours and all of his.”

As he spoke he struck her, shoved her aside, raised the tapestry and vanished. For a second she heard him hastening down, while at once from without came the barking of dogs, the jar of oaths, the sound of cries.

What it meant she did not know. Her head was whirling. The fall, the blow, the indignity of both clouded and confused her. From without the uproar mounted and suddenly, the uproar prompting, into the turmoil that was her mind, a gleam of understanding shot. At the apperception of it she shrieked, ran to the window where she shrieked again. The loosened dogs had sprung at Verplank, who, overwhelmed had fallen.

Again she shrieked. Answering the shriek, mingling with it, were snarls, the gnashing of fangs, the din of great hounds ferociously struggling for blood, tearing vehemently at flesh, at a flesh, though, that rebelled.

Verplank rose up between them. With a kick he sent one of them sprawling. But, in the recoil, torn at by the other hound, he stumbled. The dog was at his throat. In protection he held his left arm against it. With his right hand he got at the revolver in his pocket, and, through the pocket, fired twice into the brute. Gnashing still, it rolled away.

But now, from the other side, the second hound was on him. He saw its eyes, felt its breath, felt its fangs. Again he fired. As he did so, his hand relaxed. He heard a woman shrieking, the sound of hurrying feet. The wall before him mounted. His senses scattered into night.

Suddenly the garden was filled with people. Through the gate, two sergents de ville had come. These, forms furtive and uncertain followed. From the house, led by Barouffski, the footmen ran. Above, from the window, still there issued a woman’s shrieks.

Barouffski stopped, and turned. He looked up at the window. He smiled. With one hand he tapped his breast, with the other he pointed at Verplank. Then, in French, reassuringly, he called:

“My dear! See! You may be tranquil. I, I am unharmed. It is the robber.”

At the ignominy of that flouting jeer, Leilah, impelled by the impulse to do something, though it were but to beat her head against a wall, rushed from the window, and, strangling with spasms, fled out of the room and down the stair, where horror so suffocatingly enveloped her that in it her brain tipped, and she fell.