Ayn Rand - The Early Ayn Rand

"Well," said Laury, "I accept it!"

"Great, buddy! Now..."

"I accept it on one condition: you give me twenty-four hours. We'll meet Winford at the same time tomorrow!"

"Why should I?" Pug-Nose protested. "I don't wanna wait!"

"Then go to the police at once, and denounce me, and get your five thousand, instead of the fifty you'll get tomorrow! I won't bring the girl tonight, and that's final!"

"Well, okay," said Pug-Nose slowly, after some deliberation. "We'll make it tomorrow. Yuh meet me here, same time, with the gal."

"Yes!" said Laury. "Goodnight, partner!"

"Goodnight!"

The darkness was gathering and Pug-Nose Thomson disappeared behind a corner so swiftly that Laury hardly heard his footsteps. There was no one around that could have witnessed their meeting. Lonely streetlamps flared up feebly in the deserted street with two rows of silent, drooping houses, in the brown shadows of a rusty sunset. A woman was gathering the wash from a clothesline in a backyard, and a car rattled through the silence, somewhere in the distance.

Cold sweat was rolling down Laury's face. He hurried home. But his mind was made up when he entered his apartment.

"Take your things and come on," he said to Jinx sternly.

"Where?" she asked.

"I've decided to take you back to your parents tonight!"

"That's too bad," she said sweetly, with a smile of compassion for him. "I won't go!"

He stepped back and stared at her, wide-eyed.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Just that I won't go," she repeated calmly, "that's all!"

"How... how am I to understand that?"

"Oh, any way you please! Just any way!"

"You mean, you don't want to be free?"

"No!... I enjoy being a prisoner... your prisoner!"

There was only one shaded little lamp lighted in the room. She was wearing her electric-blue silk dress, tight, luminous, glittering faintly, and in the half-darkness she looked like a phosphorescent little firefly.

"Danny," she said softly, "you aren't going to send me away like that, are you?"

He did not answer. He was surprised to feel his heart beating furiously somewhere in his throat. She smiled scornfully:

"Why, there's no fun in being kidnapped if that's all there is to it!"

"But, Miss Winford..."

"Do you realize that I'm your prisoner and you can do with me anything you want?"

He was silent.

"Oh, Damned Dan!" she threw at him. "Aren't you going to take advantage of a girl who is in your power?"

He turned to her sharply and looked at her with half-closed eyes, curious, a little mocking, unexpectedly masterful, a dangerous look. And she felt that look like a hand squeezing her heart with delightful pain.

She stood straight, immobile, from the tips of her feet to her wide, sparkling eyes — waiting. "You have no right! You have no right! What are you thinking about?" he cried soundlessly to himself.

He turned away. "Come on, you're going home!" he ordered sharply.

"I'm not!" she answered.

"You're not, eh?" He turned to her fiercely. "You terrible little thing! You're the worst little creature I ever saw! I'm glad to get rid of you! You'll go now, do you hear me?"

He seized her wrist with a bruising grip. She whirled around and threw her body close against his.

"Oh, Danny! I don't want to go away!" She breathed so softly and she was so close that he heard it with his lips rather than his ears.

And then he closed his eyes, and crushed his lips against hers, and thought, when his arms clasped her, that he was going to break her in two...

"Jinx... darling... darling!"

"Danny, you wonderful thing! You most adorable of all."

They seemed to be cut away from the whole world by the little tent over the sofa, and not by the little tent only. His arms closed around her, like the gates of a kingdom that no more than two can ever enter. Their eyes were laughing soundlessly at each other. And he was saying to her the most eloquent things which a man's lips can say and for which no words are needed.

And Laury forgot all about having ever been a reporter...

It was ten minutes to nine when he remembered.

"Oh, my goodness!" he cried, jumping up. "The deadline!"

"The dead who?"

"The deadline! I must run now! Dearest, I'll be back soon!"

"Oh! Do you have to go? Well, hurry back then — you know how I'll miss you, darling!"

Laury threw his old sports car as fast as it could go, flying towards the Dawn building. He was too happy to think much about anything else. His soul was dancing, and so was his sports car. The old machine went zigzagging to right and left, jumping buoyantly and senselessly, like a young calf turned loose for the first time in a green, sunny meadow. The drivers around him swore frantically; Laury laughed joyously, his head thrown back.

Then he remembered that he had no story for Mr. Scraggs. He seized his notebook and jotted words down hurriedly. It was a miracle that he reached the Dawn building without an accident, driving as he was with his one hand on the wheel, his other on the notebook, and his mind on a pair of slanting, sparkling eyes and soft, laughing lips, back home.

"Ah, so here you are!" Mr. Scraggs exclaimed ominously, when Laury whirled into the city room.

Laury was too far away in his overflowing happiness to notice the storm on Mr. Scraggs' face.

"Yes! I'm on time, am I not?" he cried gaily.

"You are? And what about the news?"

"The news? Oh, sure, the news!... I got it! Most sensational news, Mr. Scraggs! Winford came to the meeting place and — Damned Dan was not there to meet him!"

Such a dead silence fell over the city room that Laury looked around, surprised.

"I'd like to know," Mr. Scraggs said slowly with the tense, shivering calm of a fury hard to restrain, "I'd like to know where the hell you are getting your news from!"

"Why... why, what's the matter?"

"What's the matter? You blockheaded, half-witted, confounded idiot! Nothing's the matter, except that the Globe came out half an hour ago with the news and..."

"Oh, well..."

"... and Damned Dan did come to the meeting, you skunk of a reporter!"

"He...came?"

"Where have you been all that time, you lazy cub? Sure, he came, but he didn't bring the girl, so he got one grand in advance and promised to bring her later!"

Laury had no strength to make a comment or an answer; he stood, his eyes closed, his arms drooping helplessly.

"In fact," Mr. Scraggs added, "he promised to bring her in an hour!"

"What?" Laury jumped forward as though he was going to choke Mr. Scraggs.

"I'd like to know," Mr. Scraggs cried in furious amazement, "what the hell is the meaning of your strange… Where are you going?! Hey! Stop! Come here at once! Where are you going?"

But Laury did not hear him. He was flying madly down the stairs, out into the street, into his sports car...

His apartment was empty when he got there. Jinx's perfume was still lingering in the air. A pair of adorable little slippers was thrown into a chair. The sofa cushions were still crumpled where they had been sitting together...

He found a note on his desk.

Deer partner I changed my mind. Wy shood I wait fer a haff toomoro wenn I can hav oil of it too-nyt? I'l giv yu a litle of it later fer a consolashun. So good lukk and happi dreems. Dont skueel coz then I'l skueeltoo.

Pug Noz Thomson

"You gentlemen of the press," said Mr. Winford to Laury, "are most decidedly aggravating, I must say. You should realize that I am not exactly in the mood to give you interviews and information on this painful subject... No, I repeat, the individual who calls himself Damned Dan did not come to this second meeting, as he promised, an hour after the first. I waited for him to no avail and I just returned home. That is all I know... But I do wish that you gentlemen would not be so insistent in paying me visits that are becoming rather too frequent."