“But her father,” she suggested, “he is not nice—eh?”
“He’s cracked,” he replied carelessly, then became thoughtful. “Suppose Robson phoned him?”
“Would he know?”
He smiled a little. “In a place like this everybody knows all about everybody.”
“Then about me,” she began, “you—”
She was interrupted by a pounding on the door that shook it on its hinges and filled the room with thunder. The dog came in, stiff-legged on its feet.
Brazil gave the woman a brief grim smile and called: “All right. Come in.”
The door was violently opened by a medium-sized man in a glistening black rubber coat that hung to his ankles. Dark eyes set too close together burned under the down-turned brim of his gray hat. A pale bony nose jutted out above ragged, short-cut, grizzled mustache and beard. One fist gripped a heavy applewood walking stick.
“Where is my daughter?” this man demanded. His voice was deep, powerful, resounding.
Brazil’s face was a phlegmatic mask. “Hello, Grant,” he said.
The man in the doorway took another step forward. “Where is my daughter?”
The dog growled and showed its teeth. Luise Fischer said: “Franz!” The dog looked at her and moved its tail sidewise an inch or two and back.
Brazil said: “Evelyn’s not here.”
Grant glared at him. “Where is she?”
Brazil was placid. “I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie!” Grant’s eyes darted their burning gaze around the room. The knuckles of his hand holding the stick were white. “Evelyn!” he called.
Luise Fischer, smiling as if entertained by the bearded man’s rage, said: “It is so, Mr. Grant. There is nobody else here.”
He glanced briefly at her, with loathing in his mad eyes. “Bah! The strumpet’s word confirms the convict’s!” He strode to the bedroom door and disappeared inside.
Brazil grinned. “See? He’s cracked. He always talks like that—like a guy in a bum book.”
She smiled at him and said: “Be patient.”
“I’m being,” he said dryly.
Grant came out of the bedroom and stamped across to the rear door, opened it, and disappeared through it.
Brazil emptied his glass and put it on the floor beside his chair. “There’ll be more fireworks when he comes back.”
When the bearded man returned to the room, he stalked in silence to the front door, pulled it open, and, holding the latch with one hand, banging the ferrule of his walking stick on the floor with the other, roared at Brazil: “For the last time, I’m telling you not to have anything to do with my daughter! I shan’t tell you again.” He went out, slamming the door.
Brazil exhaled heavily and shook his head. “Cracked,” he sighed. “Absolutely cracked.”
Luise Fischer said: “He called me a strumpet. Do people here—”
He was not listening to her. He had left his chair and was picking up his hat and coat. “I want to slip down and see if she got away all right. If she gets home first she’ll be O.K. Nora—that’s her stepmother—will take care of her. But if she doesn’t—I won’t be long.” He went out the back way.
Luise Fischer kicked off her remaining slipper and stood up, experimenting with her weight on her injured leg. Three tentative steps proved her leg stiff but serviceable. She saw then that her hands and arms were still dirty from the road and, exploring, presently found a bathroom opening off the bedroom. She hummed a tune to herself while she washed and, in the bedroom again, while she combed her hair and brushed her clothes—but broke off impatiently when she failed to find powder or lipstick. She was studying her reflection in a tall looking-glass when she heard the outer door opening.
Her face brightened. “I am here,” she called, and went into the other room.
Robson and Conroy were standing inside the door.
“So you are, my dear,” Robson said, smiling at her start of surprise. He was paler than before and his eyes were glassier, but he seemed otherwise unchanged. Conroy, however, was somewhat disheveled; his face was flushed and he was obviously rather drunk.
The woman had recovered composure. “What do you want?” she demanded bluntly.
Robson looked around. “Where’s Brazil?”
“What do you want?” she repeated.
He looked past her at the open bedroom door, grinned, and crossed to it. When he turned from the empty room she sneered at him. Conroy had gone to the fireplace, where the Great Dane was lying, and was standing with his back to the fire, watching them.
Robson said: “Well, it’s like this, Luise: you’re going back home with me.”
She said: “No.”
He wagged his head up and down, grinning.
“I haven’t got my money’s worth out of you yet.” He took a step toward her.
She retreated to the table, caught up the whiskey bottle by its neck. “Do not touch me!” Her voice, like her face, was cold with fury.
The dog rose, growling.
Robson’s dark eyes jerked sidewise to focus on the dog, then on Conroy—and one eyelid twitched—then on the woman again.
Conroy—with neither tenseness nor furtiveness to alarm woman or dog—put his right hand into his overcoat pocket, brought out a black pistol, put its muzzle close behind one of the dog’s ears, and shot the dog through the head. The dog tried to leap, fell on its side; its legs stirred feebly. Conroy, smiling foolishly, returned the pistol to his pocket.
Luise Fischer spun around at the sound of the shot. Screaming at Conroy, she raised the bottle to hurl it. But Robson caught her wrist with one hand, wrenched the bottle away with the other. He was grinning, saying, “No, no, my sweet,” in a bantering voice.
He put the bottle on the table again, but kept his grip on her wrist.
The dog’s legs stopped moving.
Robson said: “All right. Now, are you ready to go?”
She made no attempt to free her wrist. She drew herself up straight and said very seriously: “My friend, you do not know me yet if you think I am going with you.”
Robson chuckled. “You don’t know me if you think you’re not,” he told her.
The front door opened and Brazil came in. His sallow face was phlegmatic, though there was a shade of annoyance in his eyes. He shut the door carefully behind him, then addressed his guests. His voice was that of one who complains without anger. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “Visitors’ day? Am I supposed to be running a roadhouse?”
Robson said: “We are going now. Fraulein Fischer’s going with us.”
Brazil was looking at the dead dog, annoyance deepening in his copperish eyes. “That’s all right if she wants to,” he said indifferently.
The woman said: “I am not going.”
Brazil was still looking at the dog. “That’s all right too,” he muttered, and with more interest: “But who did this?” He walked over to the dog and prodded its head with his foot. “Blood all over the floor,” he grumbled.
Then, without raising his head, without the slightest shifting of balance or stiffening of his body, he drove his right fist up into Conroy’s handsome, drunken face.
Conroy fell away from the fist rigidly, with upbent knees, turning a little as he fell. His head and one shoulder struck the stone fireplace, and he tumbled forward, rolling completely over, face upward, on the floor.
Brazil whirled to face Robson.
Robson had dropped the woman’s wrist and was trying to get a pistol out of his overcoat pocket. But she had flung herself on his arm, hugging it to her body, hanging with her full weight on it, and he could not free it, though he tore her hair with his other hand.
