Page 336 - tender-is-the-night

dred lire.’ He paused cautiously for this to be approved. ‘The
driver says Mr. Deever in the bad trouble. He had a fight
with the police and is terribly bad hurt.’
‘I’ll be right down.’
She dressed to an accompaniment of anxious heartbeats
and ten minutes later stepped out of the elevator into the
dark lobby. The chauffeur who brought the message was
gone; the concierge hailed another one and told him the
location of the jail. As they rode, the darkness lifted and
thinned outside and Baby’s nerves, scarcely awake, cringed
faintly at the unstable balance between night and day. She
began to race against the day; sometimes on the broad ave-
nues she gained but whenever the thing that was pushing up
paused for a moment, gusts of wind blew here and there im-
patiently and the slow creep of light began once more. The
cab went past a loud fountain splashing in a voluminous
shadow, turned into an alley so curved that the buildings
were warped and strained following it, bumped and rattled
over cobblestones, and stopped with a jerk where two sentry
boxes were bright against a wall of green damp. Suddenly
from the violet darkness of an archway came Dick’s voice,
shouting and screaming.
‘Are there any English? Are there any Americans? Are
there any English? Are there any—oh, my God! You dirty
Wops!’
His voice died away and she heard a dull sound of beat-
ing on the door. Then the voice began again.
‘Are there any Americans? Are there any English?’
Following the voice she ran through the arch into a

336 Tender is the Night