"
"You--you mean you would shoot me?" she whispered, incredulous.
"Like a dog," he returned with unction.
"You, a man, would--would shoot a woman?"
"You're not a woman, my lady: you're a crook. Just as I'm not a man:
_I'm_ a crook. We're equals, sexless, soulless. You seem to have
overlooked that. Amateurs often do.... To-night I made you a fair
proposition, to play square with me and profit. You chose to be haughty.
Now you see the other side of the picture."
Bravado? Or deadly purpose? How could she tell? Her heart misgave her; she
crushed herself away from him as from some abnormally vicious, loathly
reptile.
He understood this; and regarded her with a confident leer, inscrutably
strong and malevolent.
"And there is one other reason why you will think twice before making a
row," he clinched his case. "If you did that, and I weakly permitted the
police to nab and walk us off, the business would get in the papers--your
name and all; and--what'd Maitland think of you then, my lady? What'd he
think when he read that Dan Anisty had been pinched on Broadway in company
with the little woman he'd been making eyes at--whom he was going, in his
fine manlike way, to reach down a hand to and yank up out of the gutter
and redeem and--and all that slush? Eh?"
And again his low evil laugh made her shudder. "Now, you won't risk that.
You'll come with me and behave, I guess, all right."
She was dumb, stupefied with misery.
He turned upon her sharply.
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