Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/13



The stop awakened Jay and he lay, pleasantly drowsy, not remembering yesterday nor trying to recall it. Indeed, he vaguely was warned against any effort to deal further with that day. It had dealt with him. Here he was in a Pullman berth aboard the Century, westbound. Well enough—but behind the train was New York.

In New York was Lida; so there he was again, alone with her in her mother's apartment on Park Avenue where she had told him, calmly at first and then crying, what had happened to her.

He stood staring at her, with fury flaming in him against Nucast and because of his accountability for Nucast. Then he had Lida in his arms, clinging to him and crying. She was soft and little and warm, and so young and so frightened, not like herself at all. Nineteen only, she was. So, never minding the cost to himself, he had offered to take Nucast's place.

"I won't let you. I won't think of it!"

"You have to let me," he pleaded with her.

"I haven't."

Finally he asked her, direct: "Then what are you going to do?"

That halted her heart. The straight question scared her and also brought to him, bluntly, the alternative. Yet she stuck to her refusal; he stuck by his proffer. So the matter remained between them when, at last, he left her.