Lady Afraid by Lester Dent

man’s hand as from a snake; the hand, unsuccessful in its purpose, remained poised in mid-air, the man scowling.
    “Hey, now! You can make it easy or you can make it hard,” he said.
    Sarah had dropped the suitcases she was carrying and they were on the floor close to and on either side of her legs. She felt trapped between them. Trapped, charged with terror. She began to retreat, putting one foot behind the other stiffly.
    The man’s eyes watched her.
    “Like I say, Mrs. Lineyack, make it easy or make it tough for yourself,” he told her. “Want to scream? Go ahead. Sure, you can scream. Then all your neighbors will see a cop dragging you out of here. I could even slap the cuffs on you, you know.”
    “You’re—the police?”
    “Good God! Would I be here if I wasn’t?”
    “But—”
    “But how did I happen to be here?” His thin mouth twisted. “Lady, you weren’t so clever. You just didn’t get away with it. That’s all.” Then he jerked a thumb at the door. “I got no time to kill, Mrs. Lineyack. Let’s get going.”
    Sarah took a frantic step away from him. She clutched at her scattered composure, trying to take a sane plan out of the shocked, frightened, bunched herd that her thoughts had become.
    “Am I under arrest?”
    He shrugged. “Wouldn’t you think so?”
    “Then I’m going to make a telephone call!” Sarah gasped.
    A thing that was ugly spread over the man’s face. “You think you are? And who would you call?”
    “My attorney!”
    “Oh! Lawyer, huh?… I thought maybe you had a boyfriend.”
    “No, I—”
    “What, no boyfriend?” He was getting nasty. “A babe as pretty as you, Mrs. Lineyack, and you don’t have some fellow you can call on in a little emergency like this? What’s wrong with the men around this town?”
    “I’ve a right to telephone my lawyer!” Sarah said tensely.
    The man’s head gave a sharp negative jerk. “Afraid you don’t know the law, Mrs. Lineyack. The law sets a time we can hold you before you can call anybody.” Again his hand stabbed toward the door. “You heard me say let’s get going, didn’t you? That’s what you’d better do. Right now.”
    Sarah wheeled toward the bedroom. But the man jumped forward, his hands clamping on her wrists. He wrenched her arms together, crossing them. His strength was hard and animal-like and he hurt her.
    “What’re you trying to pull?”
    “I want to tell my son good-by!”
    “Yeah? Skip it. You got other worries now, Mrs. Lineyack. You forget the kid.”
    Sarah struggled against his hard hands, gasping, “Let me see Jonnie again! Please! Oh, dear God, let me say good-by to Jonnie.”
    His old eyes were sardonic, unsympathetic. “I ain’t God,” he said. “And I don’t like the way you’re acting, lady. Am I going to have to slap bracelets on you?”
    “You’re a beast! A cruel beast!”
    “Yeah, and you’re in a jam, lady.”
    The will to resist fell out of Sarah then, and she turned and stumbled to the door. The man stayed beside her, a hand on her arm. They went into the hall and he yanked her to a brief stop while he pulled the door shut behind them.
    “The kid will be okay. We’ll send a matron up here for him,” he said. He pushed her toward the elevator.
    No more was said until they were on the street. Then the man pointed at Sarah’s automobile, demanding, “That the car you used, eh?”
    “Yes,” Sarah admitted dully
    “We’ll take it. I’ll drive. You’re doing fine now, Mrs. Lineyack.”
    He was not a good driver. He let the motor labor to death twice before he thought of releasing the hand brake, and afterward he handled the turns awkwardly. He did not roll the windows down, and soon the inside of the coupe was sour with the odor of old cigar smoke that came from him.
    Sarah rode numbly, as distantly from him as she could crowd on the seat. The man repelled her, but this seemed a minor matter. What I must do, she thought wildly, is get order out of this chaos,