Page:The Van Roon (IA thevanroon00snaiiala).pdf/250



Amid the silence which followed Elbert's remark, June fought hard to cast her weakness off. She wanted no longer to die. The recovery of the talisman inhibited, at least for the time being, that desire. Acutely aware that the Van Roon was still miraculously hers, she felt that come what might she must go on.

But her position was hopeless indeed. She dare not venture out of doors, with a murderous thief waiting to spring upon her. And if venture she did, there was nowhere she could go. Besides, had there been any place of refuge for such a weary bundle of frightened misery, without money and with a sorry ignorance of the fog-bound maze of bricks and mortar in which she was now lost, there would have been no means of getting to her destination.

At the same time, she had no wish to stay with these uncouth, ill-looking, evil-smelling people one moment longer than was necessary. In a curiously intimate way she was reminded of that grim story Oliver Twist, which had so powerfully haunted her youth. To her distorted mind, this squalid interior was a veritable thieves' kitchen, the crone a female Fagin, the angel of the cup, a counterpart of Bill Sikes, and the gloomy, beetle-browed Elbert a kind of Artful Dodger grown up. She and her treasure could never be safe in such a place, yet at the other side of the door nameless horrors awaited her.