I watched him replace the syringe in its holder, and the holder in his inside jacket pocket.
The larger man looked at his watch. He spoke this time in English to the smaller man, he who had had the syringe. The larger man spoke with a definite accent, but I could not place the accent.
'We will return after midnight,' he said, 'It will be easier then. We can reach point P in five hours with less traffic. And I have other business to attend to this evening.
'All right,' said the smaller man. 'We'll be ready then.' There had not been the slightest trace of an accent in the smaller man's response. I had no doubt that his native tongue was English. He perhaps had difficulty following the natural speech of the other. But when the other had spoken to him, curtly, in the strange tongue, he had obeyed, and promptly. I gathered he feared the larger man.
The room began to grow a bit dark at the edges.
The larger man came behind me and felt the pulse of one of my bound wrists. Then he released me.
The room seemed to grow darker, and warmer. I tried to keep my eyes open. The larger man left the room. The smaller lingered. He went to the night table and took one of my cigarettes and with one of my tiny, fine matches, imported from Paris, lit it.
He threw the match into the ash tray. He touched me again, this time intimately, but I could not cry out. I began to lose consciousness. He blew smoke into my eyes and noes, leaning over me. I struggled weakly against the bonds, fighting to stay conscious.
I heard the larger man's voice, from the doorway it seem, but it seemed, too, from far away.
The smaller man hurriedly left my side.
The larger man entered the room, and I turned my head weakly to regard him. I saw the two men in the uniforms of police leaving the penthouse, followed by the smaller man, who, as he left the house, was drawing the mask from his head. I did not see his face.
The larger man was looking down at me. I looked up at him, weakly, almost unconscious.
He spoke to me matter-of-factly. 'We will return after midnight,' he told me. I struggled weakly to speak, fighting the gag, the drug. I only wanted to sleep. 'You would like to know,' he asked, 'what will happen to you then?' I nodded.
'Curiosity,' he said, 'is not becoming in a Kajira.'
I did not understand him.
'You might be beaten for it,' he said.
I could not understand.
'Let us say simply,' he said, 'that we will return after midnight.' Through the mouth hole in the mask I saw his lips twist into a smile. His eyes, too, seemed to smile. 'Then,' he said, 'you will be drugged again.' 'And then,' he added, 'you will be crated for shipment.' He left the room.
I pulled at the cords that bound me, and lost consciousness.
I awakened in the bed, still bound.
It was dark. I could hear the noises of the city's night traffic through the door open to the patio and terrace. Through the open curtains I could see the tens of thousands of bright rectangles of windows, many of them still illuminated. The bed was drenched in sweat. I had no idea of the time. I knew only it was night. I rolled over to see the alarm clock on the vanity, but the face had been turned to one side.
I struggled with my bonds, wildly. I must free myself!
But after a few precious minutes of futile struggle I lay bound as perfectly as I had been earlier in the afternoon.
Then suddenly new sweat broke out on my body.
The knife!
Before the men had burst into the penthouse I had thrust it beneath the pillow. I rolled on to my side and, bound, lifted the pillow away with my teeth. I almost fainted with relief. The knife lay where I had left it. On the satin sheet I struggled to move the knife, with my mouth and the back of my head, toward my bound hands. It was a painful, frustrating task, but inch by quarter inch, I moved it downward. Once it fell to the floor and inwardly I cried out with anguish. Almost choking, from the loop on my throat, I slid half out of the bed and felt for the knife with my feet. My ankles had been crossed and lashed securely together. It was extremely difficult to pick up the knife. It fell again, and again. I cursed the neckrope that bound me to the head of the bed. I wept. Far below, in the streets, I heard the siren of a fire engine, and the other noises of the city night. I struggled, gagged and bound, silently, torturedly. At last I managed to get the knife to the foot of the bed. With my feet and body I managed to pull it up beneath me. And then I had the handle in my bound hands! But I could not reach the bonds. I held the knife but could not use it. Then, feverishly, I cried inwardly with joy, and pressed the point into the back of the bed and braced it with my own body. I began to saw at the cords with the knife. The knife, its handle braced against my sweating back, slipped four times, but each time I put it again in place and addressed myself again to my task. Then my wrists were free. I took the knife and slashed the cord at my throat and the cord at my ankles.
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
