I leaped from the bed and ran to the vanity. My heart sank. It was already a half past midnight!
My heart was pounding.
I pulled the gag down from my face, pulled the heavy wad of soured packing from my mouth. Then I was suddenly ill, and fell to my hands and knees, and vomited on the rug. I shook my head. With the knife I cut the gag from where it lay about my neck.
I shook my head again.
It was now thirty-five minutes after midnight.
I ran to the wardrobe. I seized the first garment I touched, a pair of tan, bell-bottomed slacks and a black, buttoning, bare-midriff blouse.
I held them to me, breathing heavily. I looked across the room. My heart almost stopped. There I saw in the shadows, in the dim light in the room from the city outside, a girl. She was nude. She held something before her. About her throat there was a band of steel. On her thigh a mark.
"No!" we cried together.
I gasped, my head swam. Sick, I turned away from my reflection in the full-length mirror across the room.
I pulled on the slacks and slipped into the blouse. I found a pair of sandals. It was thirty-seven minutes past midnight.
I ran again to the wardrobe and pulled out a small suitcase. I threw it to the foot of the triple chest and plunged garments into it, and snapped it shut. I seized up a handbag and ran, with the suitcase, into the living room. I swung back a small oil, and fumbled with the dial of the wall safe. I kept, usually, some fifteen thousand dollars, and jewelry, at home. I scrabbled in the opening and thrust money and jewelry into the handbag. I looked with terror at the splintered door.
On the wall clock it was forty minutes past midnight.
I was afraid to go through the door. I remembered the knife. I ran back to the bedroom and seized it, shoving it into the handbag. Then, frightened, I ran to the patio and terrace. The rope of sheets that I had used to leave the penthouse had been removed. I ran again to the bedroom. I saw them lying to one side, separated, as though laundry.
I looked again in the mirror. I stopped. I buttoned the collar of the black blouse high about my neck, to conceal the steel band on my throat. I saw again the mark, drawn in lipstick, on the mirror. Seizing up my handbag and the small suitcase I fled through the broken door. I stopped before the tiny private elevator in the hall outside the door.
I ran back inside the penthouse, to get my wrist watch. It was forty-two minutes past midnight. With the key from my purse I opened the elevator and descended to the hall below, where there was a bank of common elevators. I pushed all the down buttons.
I looked at the dials at the top of the elevator doors. There were two that were already rising, one at the seventh floor and one at the ninth. I could not have called them!
I moaned.
I turned and ran toward the stairs. I stopped at the height of the stairs. Far below, on the steel-reinforced, broad cement stairs, ringing hollowly in the shaft, I heard the footsteps of two men, climbing.
I ran back to the elevators.
One stopped at my floor, the twenty-fourth. I stood with my back presses against the wall.
A man and his wife stepped out.
I gasped and fled past them.
They looked at me strangely as I pushed at the main-floor button As the door on my elevator closed, I heard the door of the adjoining elevator open. Through the crack of the closing door I saw the backs of two men, in the uniforms of police.
Slowly, slowly the elevator descended. It stopped on four floors. I stood in the back of the elevator, while three couples and another man, with an attachA© case, entered. When we reached the main floor I fled from the elevator but, in a moment, regained my control, checked myself and looked about. There were some people in the lobby, sitting about, reading or waiting. Some looked at me idly. It was a hot night. One man, with a pipe, looked up at me, over the top of his newspaper. Was he one of them? My heart almost stopped. He returned to his reading. I would go to the apartment garage, but not through the lobby. I would go by the street.
The doorman touched his cap to me as I left.
I smiled.
Outside on the street I realized how hot the night was.
Inadvertently I touched the collar of my blouse. I felt the steel beneath it. A man passed, looking at me.
Did he know? Could he know that there was a band of steel at my throat? I was foolish. I shook my head, trembling.
I threw my head back and walked hurriedly down the sidewalk toward the street entrance to the apartment garage.
The night was hot, so hot.
A man looked me over thoroughly as I walked past. I hurried past.
A few feet beyond I turned to look back. he was still watching.
I tried to turn him away, with a look of coldness, of contempt for him. But he did not look away. I was frightened. I turned away, hurrying on. Why had I not been able to turn him away? Why hadn't he looked away? Why hadn't he turned away, shamefaced, embarrassed, and hurried on in the opposite direction? He hadn't. He had continued to look at me. Did he know that there was a mark on my thigh? Did he sense that? Did that mark make me somehow subtly different than I had been? Did it somehow, set me apart from other women on this world? Could I no longer drive men away? And if I could no longer drive them away, what did that mean? What had that small mark done to me? I felt suddenly helpless, and somehow, suddenly, for the first time in my life, vulnerably and radically female. I stumbled on.
I entered the apartment garage.
I found the keys in my handbag and gave them hurriedly, smiling, to the attendant.
"Is anything wrong, Miss Brinton?" he asked.
"No, no," I said.
Even he seemed to look at me.
"Please hurry!" I begged him.
He quickly touched his cap and turned away.
I waited, it seemed for years. I counted the beatings of my heart.
Then the car, small, purring, in perfect tune, a customized Maserati, whipped to the curb, and the attendant stepped out.
I thrust a bill in his hand.
"Thank you," he said.
He seemed concerned, deferential. He touched his cap. He held open the door. I blushed, and thrust past him, throwing my suitcase and handbag into the car. I climbed behind the wheel, and he closed the door.
He leaned over me. "Are you well, Miss Brinton?" he asked.
He seemed too close to me.
"Yes! Yes!" I said and threw the car into gear and burned forward, only to stop with a shriek of rubber, skidding some ten feet.
With the electric switch he raised the door for me, and I drove out into the swift traffic, out into the hot August night.
Even though the night was hot the air rushing past me, pulling at my hair, refreshed me.
I had done well.
I had escaped!
I drove past a policeman and was almost going to stop, that he might help me, protect me.
But how did I know? Others had worn the uniforms of the police? And he might think I was insane, mad. And I might be detained in the city. Where they were. They might be waiting for me. I did not know who they were. I was not even clear what they wanted. They could be anywhere. Now I must escape, escape, escape!