The Harlot’s Pen by Claudia H Long Read Free Book Online Page A

grabbed my hair and knocked my head against the floor. He must have done it a second time, although I don’t remember. The last I saw was the Irish policeman’s club coming down on the agent’s head.
    When I came to, I was lying on the floor with my blouse in disarray, my petticoat torn. It was terribly cold, pitch dark in my cell, and no light out in the hallway. I tried to sit up, but my ribs were in agony, and my head throbbed fiercely. I lay back until I no longer felt ill, and made a second, more successful attempt. At last, the room stopped spinning, but the cold and dark filled me with fear. How long would I remain there?
    I knew that I had to master my fear before it immobilized me completely. I felt for the wall, and, keeping a hand on its rough surface, I was able to stand. I pulled my clothes around me as best I could—the petticoat was a lost cause—and realized that I was still wearing my shoes.
    Dressed, to a point, I edged towards the front of the cell. I felt for the bars. I ran my fingers to the edge, recalling that they didn’t make up a real door. At the junction of the bars and the wall there was a gap that allowed passage. I crept forward, encountering no one, relying on my memory in the darkness to find the door.
    When I got to the door, dim light seeped through the side casement from the street, and my eyes, starved by darkness, at last could take in my surroundings. I pulled on the door, but of course it was locked. I felt a wave of despair and nausea, steadying myself against the high desk I had seen when I was brought in. I looked over at the high desk, and saw that a ring of keys hung from a hook on the other side, faintly catching the light. A shorter woman would not have been able to see them, but grateful for once for my height, I reached across and took them as quietly as I could.
    I had no idea what time it was, but the sky was a flat dark with no sign of dawn as I stepped out onto the deserted street. For reasons I still don’t understand, I locked the door behind me and took the keys. I looked around, and there was no person, not even a derelict in sight. I walked quickly towards Market Street. The lights of the streetlamps, their auras glowing luridly in the misty air, lured me, until I realized that I must look like a disheveled whore, likely to attract either an arrest or another horrible encounter.
    At the edge of the main thoroughfare, I moved tentatively under the unavoidable streetlight, then jumped back as two shadows rounded the corner. My heart pounded as they walked by. One turned, seemed to see me. “Come on out, girl,” he said thickly. “Give me a kiss.”
    His friend laughed drunkenly and took him by the arm. “Get a pox from that filth,” he said. Unbidden the image of the red-nosed prostitute on the corner in Oakland rose in my mind. This was her nighttime, her daily bread of fear. I skulked along the side of the road, keeping in shadows, and turning up Larkin Street rather than the thoroughfare of Van Ness Avenue once I had crossed Market Street.
    At first I walked briskly in the direction of home, too devastated to even feel the cold or notice the heaviness of the wet air. But my pace slowed when I realized what home meant: Sam’s home, and no haven for me. Yet I had nowhere else tonight.
    Whenever I heard a car or carriage wheels behind me, I moved into the doorway of a house until it passed. I hurried along, walking up the steep blocks, past darkened homes and carriage gates. At last, the first glimmer of dawn in the distant sky was finally visible as I crested Nob Hill. I was breathing hard, both from my rib pain and from the exhaustion of the climb, when an automobile stopped next to me. I had been too tired to even hear its approach.
    “Can I help you, miss?” a fine voice from within called to me. I shrank back, but with the growing light I couldn’t hide. The white buildings behind me, now bathed in the slight glow of late winter sunrise, set me off in