will be now. You're here. You've given them a chance to talk downstairs.
You've nowhere to go, and you're going to marry me at once."

In the cab he explained more fully. They would get a license, and then
go to one of the hotels. There they could be married, in their own
suite.

"All regularly and in order, honey," he said, and kissed her hand. She
had hardly heard. She was staring ahead, not thinking, not listening,
not seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man before her, of his
sheer physical proximity, of his increasing exuberance.

"I'm mad about you, girl," he said. "Mad. And now you are going to be
mine, until death do us part."

She shivered and drew away, and he laughed a little. Girls were like
that, at such times. They always took a step back for every two steps
forward. He let her hand go, and took a careful survey of his face in
the mirror of the cab. The swelling had gone down, but that bruise below
his eye would last for days. He cursed under his breath.

It was after nine o'clock when one of the Cardew cars stopped not far
from the Benedict Apartments, and Willy Cameron got out.

He was quite certain that Louis Akers would know where Lily was, and
he anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor. There might
be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the
night before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if
he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white
throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more
than a ripple of excitement.

"Well, look who's here!" muttered the telephone girl, and watched his
approach, with its faint limp, over the top of her desk. Behind, from
his cage, the elevator man was staring with avid interest.

"I suppose Mr. Akers is in?" said Willy Cameron, politely. The girl
smiled up at him.

"I'll say he ought to be, after last night! What're you going to do now?
Kill him?"

In spite of his anxiety there was a faint twinkle in Willy Cameron's
eyes.

"No," he said slowly. "No. I think not. I want to talk to him."

"Sam," called the telephone girl, "take this gentleman up to
forty-three."

"Forty-three's out." Sam partly shut the elevator door; he had seen
Forty-three's rooms the night before, and he had the discretion of his
race. "Went out with a lady at quarter to five."

Willy Cameron took a step or two toward the cage.

"You don't happen to be lying, I suppose?"