Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/49

Rh prevent his discovering that it was a girl who had run away from his roommate's snores. She was glad she had succeeded in eluding him. Only now that she was free she would like—she half wished that he could guess.

Then came footsteps pounding at the entrance of the blind alley.

Ivy thrilled, looked this way and that, laughing in the renewed joy of the chase. Overtake those flying feet, impertinent boy? Never. For beside the house at her left Ivy had discovered a narrow flight of stone steps mounting to some unknown level in the darkness.

Up she sprang, two steps at a time. But tired muscles refused to climb a thousand steps in five hundred bounds; and these steps were steep. So she was obliged to slacken her speed and plod step by step, up and up, until there seemed no end, and she was beginning to puff and pant. And in climbing those endless stairs she had to raise both hands several times to the faithful tarn in order to prevent its slipping off and spilling her hair about her shoulders.

Just as she saw the deep blue of the night sky above the top step, there came to her the sound of ascending steps, two at a time on the first few stairs, then one at a time, and slowing perceptibly. Ivy had come above the tops of the houses crowded close under the hill in the older part of the city, and when she saw the top step and beyond that the street along the edge of the hill and heard the hurrying footsteps behind her, she bounded up the remaining steps. Sharply to the left she turned, along the road overlooking the city, and came to an abrupt and jarring stop in the embrace of a giant, who resolved into a policeman at a glance. The insecure tam-o'-shanter slipped and dropped to the nape of her neck, revealing its burden of wavy curling locks to the copper's astonished eyes for a brief moment before she swept one arm swiftly upward to replace it and conceal her disordered hair.

"Holy St. Swithings! It's a girl!" whistled Officer Corrigan, and grasped Ivy's two arms just below the shoulders holding her off for inspection. "And a queen at that. What's up, my pretty lady? And where did you get the rig?"

"Let me go! Let me go,—p-please!" panted Ivy, weaving from side to side in a struggle to escape the arm of the law. "Come, officer. I've got to go on. You'll be sorry if—" Then changing her tone—"Please, sir," and smiled at him.

"Sure," chuckled Officer Corrigan, and still holding her in his great paws, he looked up and down the street "Just one, little queen, and I'll forget I met you." He released one of Ivy's arms so that he could press back his straggling mustache with two caressing sweeps of his great fingers. Ivy realized his intentions and fought madly, but succeeded only in keeping one arm free while he bent over her with a smug, grimacing face.

"Just put up your bail, little bird, and you're out o' jail," he smirked. "Put up your pretty face and you can say good-bye."

"You ugly mutt," sobbed Ivy, in rage and desperation, her free hand striving futilely to break the grip on