AS June turned and ran she heard a wild and startled oath. Before her was the eternal fog-laden darkness of the narrow street. But now it struck her with a thrill of pure terror that the mist was not thick enough to conceal her flight. The swift surprise of the onset had gained for her a start of a few yards, but instantly she knew that it would not suffice.
She ran, all the same, as if her heart would burst. But her legs seemed to wear the shackles that afflict one in a dream. Her most frantic efforts did not urge them on, and yet, in spite of that, they bore her better than she knew. Not a soul was in sight. She could hear Keller’s boots echo on the damp pavement as they pounded behind her. It could only be a matter of seconds before his fingers were again on her throat. But this time, before robbing her of the Van Roon and getting clear, he would have to kill her.
The vow had hardly been made, when at the other side of the street she saw a thread of light. It came from a house whose door was open. Instinctively she turned and made one final dash for it. This was the last wild hope there was.
A man, it seemed, was in the act of leaving the house. Wearing overcoat and hat, he stood just within the doorway peering into the murk before venturing out. June flung herself literally upon him.
“Save me! Save me!” she was able to gasp. “A man! A man is after me!”
The house was of the poverty-stricken kind whose living room opens on to the street. June had a confused vision of a glowing lamp, a bright fire, a dingy tablecloth and several people seated around it. Her wild impact upon the man who was about to put off from its threshold drove him backwards several paces into the room. At the same instant a female voice, loud and imperious, rose from the table.
“Shut the door, Elbert, can’t yer? The fog’s comin’ in that thick it’ll put out the perishin’ fire.”
The bewildered Elbert, raked fore and aft by fierce women, automatically obeyed the truculent voice at his back, even while he gave ground in a collision which seemed to rob him of any wit that he might possess. With a deft turn of the heel, he dealt the door a kick which effectually closed it in the murderous face of the halting and hesitating Keller.
June, shuddering in every vein, clung to her protector.
“Gawd-love-us-all!” Cries and commotion arose from the table, yet almost at once the imperious voice soared above the din. “Set her down, can’t yer, Elbert? Didn’t yer see that bloke?”
“Ah—I did,” said Elbert, stolidly pressing his queer armful into a chair near the fire.
“Better git after him lively,” said the voice at the table. “He’s the one as did in Kitty Lewis last week.”
Elbert, a young man six feet tall and proportionately broad of shoulder, was not however a squire of dames. With a scared look on a face that even in circumstances entirely favourable could hardly rank as a thing of beauty, he moved to the door and slipped a bolt across. “Not goin’ near the——” he said, sullenly. “Not goin’ to be mixed up wiv it—not me.”
The voice at the table, whose owner was addressed as Maw, proceeded “to tell off” Elbert. He was a skunk, he was no man, he was a mean swine. In the sight of Maw, who ran to words as well as flesh, Elbert was all this and more. She rose majestically, threatening to “dot him” if he didn’t “’op in,” and she came to June with an enormous bosom striving to burst from its anchorage, an apron that had once been white, and with her entire person exuding an odour peculiar to those of her sex who drink gin out of a teacup.
Three other people were at the table, and they were engaged upon a meal of toasted cheese, raw onions and beer. Of these, two were girls about sixteen, scared, slatternly and anæmic; the third was a toothless hag who looked ninety; and as the whole family, headed by Maw, suddenly crowded round June, the terrified fugitive, shuddering in the chair by the fire, hardly knew which of her deliverers was the most repulsive.
June fought with every bit of her strength against the threat of total collapse that assailed her now. In the desperate hope of warding off disaster, she gathered the last broken fragment of will. But nature had been driven too hard. For the second time within the space of one terrible hour, she lost the sense of where she was.