The Early Ayn Rand

"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?"