The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4957]
She listened to his retreating footsteps, and then began, automatically to unbutton her thin white blouse. But with the sound of the engine of his car below she ran to the window. She leaned out, elbows on the sill, and watched him go, without a look up at her window.
So that was the end of that!
Then, all at once, she was fiercely angry. He had got her into this scrape, and now he had left her. He had pretended to love her, and all the time he had meant to do just this, to let her offer herself so he might reject her. He had been playing with her. She had lost her home because of him, had been beaten almost insensible, had been ill for weeks, and now he had driven away, without even looking back.
She jerked her blouse off, still standing by the window, and when the sleeve caught on her watch, she jerked that off, too. She stood for a moment with it in her hand, her face twisted with shame and anger. Then recklessly and furiously she flung it through the open window.
In the stillness of the street far below she heard it strike and rebound.
"That for him!" she muttered.
Almost immediately she wanted it again. He had given it to her. It was all she had left now, and in a curious way it had, through long wearing, come to mean Graham to her. She leaned out of the window. She thought she saw it gleaming in the gutter, and already, attracted by the crash, a man was crossing the street to where it lay.
"You let that alone," she called down desperately. The figure was already stooping over it. Entirely reckless now, she ran, bare-armed and bare-bosomed, down the stairs and out into the street. She had thought to see its finder escaping, but he was still standing where he had picked it up.
"It's mine," she began. "I dropped it out of the window. I - "
"You threw it out of the window. I saw you."
It was Rudolph.
"You - " He snarled, and stood with menacing eyes fixed on her bare neck.
"Rudolph!"
"Get into the house," he said roughly. "You're half-naked."
"Give me my watch."
"I'll give it to you, all right. What's left of it. When we get in."
He followed her into the hail, but when she turned there and held out her hand, he only snarled again.
"We'll talk up-stairs."
"I can't take you up. The landlady don't allow it."
"She don't, eh? You had that Spencer skunk up there."
His face frightened her, and she lied vehemently.
"That's not so, and you know it, Rudolph Klein. He came inside, just like this, and we stood and talked. Then he went away. He wasn't inside ten minutes." Her voice rose hysterically, but Rudolph caught her by the arm, and pushing her ahead of him, forced her up the stairs.
"We're going to have this out," he muttered, viciously.
Half way up she stopped.
"You're hurting my arm."
"You be glad I'm not breaking it for you."
He climbed in a mounting fury. He almost threw her into her room, and closing the door, he turned the key in it. His face reminded her of her father's the night he had beaten her, and her instinct of self-preservation made her put the little table between them.
"You lay a hand on me," she panted, "and I'll yell out the window. The police would be glad enough to have something on you, Rudolph Klein, and you know it."
"They arrest women like you, too."
"Don't you dare say that." And as he took a step or two toward her she retreated to the window. "You stay there, or I'll jump out of the window."
She looked desperate enough to do it, and Rudolph hesitated.
"He was up here. I saw him at the window. I've been trailing you all evening. Keep off that window-sill, you little fool! I'm not going to kill you. But I'm going to get him, all right, and don't you forget it."
His milder tone and the threat frightened her more than ever. He would get Graham; he was like that. Get him in some cruel, helpless way; that was the German blood in him. She began to play for time, with instinctive cunning.
"Listen,