JOHN BRUCE fumbled in the pocket of his dressing gown and produced a cigarette; but he was a long time in lighting it.
“Hawkins,” he demanded abruptly, “is Paul Veniza in the house now?”
“He's upstairs, I think,” Hawkins answered. “Do you want him?”
“Yes—in a moment,” said John Bruce slowly. “I've been thinking a good deal while you were talking. I can only see things one way; and that is that the time has come when you should take your place as Claire's father.”
The old man drew back, startled.
“Tell Claire?” he whispered. Then he shook his head miserably. “No, no! I—I haven't earned the right. I—I can't break my word to Paul.”
“I do not ask you to break your word to Paul. I want you to earn the right—now.”
Hawkins was still shaking his head.
“Earn it now—after all these years! How can I?”
“By promising that you won't drink any more,” said John Bruce quietly.
Hawkins' eyes went to the floor.
“Promise!” he said in a shamed way. “I've been promising that for twenty years. Paul wouldn't believe me. I wouldn't believe myself. I went and got drunker than I've been in all my life the night that dog said he was going to marry Claire, and Claire said it was true, and wouldn't listen to anything Paul could say to her against it.”
“I would believe you,” said John Bruce gravely.
For an instant Hawkins' face glowed, while tears came into the old blue eyes—and then he turned hurriedly and walked to the window, his back to John Bruce.
“It's no use,” he said, with a catch in his voice. “You don't know me. Nobody that knows me would take my word for that—least of all Paul.”
“I know this,” said John Bruce steadily, “that you have never been really put to the test. The test is here now. You'd stop, and stop forever, wouldn't you, if it meant Claire's happiness, her future, her salvation from the horror and degradation and misery and utter hopelessness that a life with a man who is lost to every sense of decency must bring her? I would believe you if you promised under those conditions. It seems to me to be the only chance there is left to save her. It is true she believes Paul is her father and accepts him as such, and neither his influence nor his arguments will move her from her determination to marry Crang; but I think there is a chance if she is told your story, if she is brought to her own father through this very thing. I think if you are in each other's arms at last after all these years from just that cause it might succeed where everything else failed. But this much is sure. It has a chance of success, and you owe Claire that chance. Will you take it, Hawkins? Will you promise?”
There was no answer from the window, only the shaking of the old man's shoulders.
“Hawkins,” said John Bruce softly, “wouldn't it be very wonderful if you saved her, and saved yourself; and wonderful, too, to know the joy of your own daughter's love?”
The old man turned suddenly from the window, his arms stretched out before him as though in intense yearning; and there was something almost of nobility in the gray head held high on the bent shoulders, something of greatness in the old wrinkled face that seemed to exalt the worn and shabby clothes hanging so formlessly about him.
“My little girl,” he said brokenly.
“Your promise, Hawkins,” said John Bruce in a low voice. “Will you promise?”
“Yes,” breathed the old man fiercely. “Yes—so help me, God! But”—he faltered suddenly—“but Paul——-”
“Ask Paul to come down here,” said John Bruce. “I have something to say to both of you—more than I have already said to you. I will answer for Paul.”
The old cab driver obeyed mechanically. He crossed the room and went out. John Bruce heard him mounting the stairs. Presently he returned, followed by the tall, straight, white-haired figure of Paul Veniza.
Hawkins closed the door behind them.
Paul Veniza turned sharply at the sound, and glanced gravely from one to the other. His eyebrows went up as he looked at John Bruce. John Bruce's face was set.
“What is the matter?” inquired Paul Veniza anxiously.
“I want you to listen first to a little story,” said John Bruce seriously—and in a few words he told Paul Veniza, as he had told Hawkins, of his love for Claire and the events of the night that had brought him there a wounded man. “And this afternoon,” John Bruce ended, “I asked Claire to marry me, and she told me she was going to marry Doctor Crang.”
Paul Veniza had listened with growing anxiety, casting troubled and uncertain glances the while at Hawkins.
“Yes,” he said in a low voice.
John Bruce spoke abruptly:
“Hawkins has promised he will never drink again.”
Paul Veniza, with a sudden start, stared at Hawkins, and then a sort of kindly tolerance dawned in his face.
“My poor friend!” said Paul Veniza as though he were comforting a wayward child, and went over and laid his hand affectionately on Hawkins' arm.
“I have told Hawkins,” went on John Bruce, “that I love Claire, that I asked her to marry me; and Hawkins in turn has told me he is Claire's father, and how he brought her to you and Mrs. Veniza when she was a baby, and of the pledge he made you then. It is because I love Claire too that I feel I can speak now. You once told Hawkins how he could redeem his daughter. He wants to redeem her now. He has promised never to drink again.”
Paul Veniza's face had whitened a little. Half in a startled, half in a troubled way, he looked once more at John Bruce and then at Hawkins.
“My poor friend!” he said again.
John Bruce's hand on the arm of his chair clenched suddenly.
“You may perhaps feel that he should not have told me of his relationship to Claire; but it was this damnable situation with Crang that forced the issue.”
Paul Veniza left Hawkins' side and began to pace the room in an agitated way.
“No!” he said heavily. “I do not blame Hawkins. We—we neither of us know what to do. It is a terrible, an awful thing. Crang is like some loathsome creature to her, and yet in some way that I cannot discover he has got her into his power. I have tried everything, used every argument I can with her, pleaded with her—and it has been useless.” He raised his arms suddenly above his head, partly it seemed in supplication, partly in menace. “Oh, God!” he cried out. “I, too, love her, for she has really been my daughter through all these years. But I do not quite understand.” He turned to Hawkins. “Even if you kept your promise now, my friend, what connection has that with Doctor Crang? Could that in any way prevent this marriage?”
It was John Bruce who answered.
“It is the last ditch,” he said evenly; “the one way you have not tried—to tell her her own and her father's story. I do not say it will succeed. But it is the great crisis in her life. It is the one thing in the world that ought to sway her, win her. Her father! After twenty years—her father!”
Paul Veniza's hands, trembling, ruffled through his white hair. Hawkins' fingers fumbled, now with the buttons on his vest, now with the brim of his hat which He had picked up aimlessly from the table; and his eyes, lifting from the floor, glanced timorously, almost furtively, at Paul Veniza, and sought the floor again.
John Bruce got up from his chair and stepped toward them.
“I want to tell you something,” he said sharply, “that ought to put an end to any hesitation on your parts atanyplan, no matter what, that offers even the slightest chance of stopping this marriage. Listen! Devil though you both believe this Crang to be, you do not either of you even know the man for what he is. While I was lying there”—he flung out his hand impulsively toward the couch—“the safe here in this room was opened and robbed one night. You know that. But you do not know that it was done by Doctor Crang and his confederates. You know what happened. But you do not know that while the 'burglars' pretended to hold Crang at bay with a revolver and then made their 'escape,' Crang, with most of the proceeds of that robbery in his own pockets, was laughing up his sleeve at you.”
Hawkins' jaw had dropped as he stared at John Bruce.
“Crang did it! You—you say Crang committed that robbery?” stammered Paul Veniza. “But you were unconscious! Still you—you seem to know that the safe was robbed!”
“Apparently I do!” John Bruce laughed shortly. “Crang too thought I was unconscious, but to make sure he jabbed me with his needle. It took effect just at the right time—for Crang—just as you and Claire appeared in the doorway. And”—his brows knitted together—“it seems a little strange that none of you have ever mentioned it in my presence; that not a word has ever been said to me about it.”
Paul Veniza coughed nervously.
“You were sick,” he said; “too sick, we thought, for any excitement.”
Hawkins suddenly leaned forward; his wrinkled face was earnest.
“That is not true!” he said bluntly. “It might have been at first, but it wasn't after you got better. It was mostly your money that was stolen. Claire put it there the night you came here, and——”
“Hawkins!” Paul Veniza called out sharply in reproof.
“But he knows now it's gone,” said the old cabman a little helplessly. He blundered on: “Paul felt he was responsible for your money, and he was afraid you might not want to take it if you knew he had to make it up out of his own pocket, and——”
John Bruce took a step forward, and laid his hand on Paul Veniza's shoulder. He stood silently, looking at the other.
“It is nothing!” said Paul Veniza, abashed.
“Perhaps not!” said John Bruce. “But”—he turned abruptly away, his lips tight—“it just made me think for a minute. In the life I've led men like you are rare.”
“We were speaking of Doctor Crang,” said Paul Veniza a little awkwardly. “If you know that Doctor Crang is the thief, then that is the way out of our trouble. Instead of marrying Claire, he will be sent to prison.”
John Bruce shook his head.
“You said yourself I was unconscious at the time. You certainly must have found me that way, and Crang would make you testify that for days I had been raving in delirium. I do not think you could convict him on my testimony.”
“But even so,” said Paul Veniza, “there is Claire. If she knew that Crang was a criminal, she——”
“She does know,” said John Bruce tersely.
“Claire knows!” ejaculated Paul Veniza in surprise. “You—you told her, then?”
“No,” John Bruce answered. “I said to her: 'Suppose I were to tell you that the man is a criminal?' She answered: 'He is a criminal.' I said then: 'Suppose he were sent to jail—to serve a sentence?' She answered: 'I would marry him when he came out.'”
“My God!” mumbled the old cabman miserably.
“I tell you this,” said John Bruce through set teeth, and speaking directly to Paul Veniza, “because it seems to me to be the final proof that mere argument with Claire is useless, and that something more is necessary. I do not ask you to release Hawkins from his pledge; I ask you to believe his promise this time because back of it he knows it may save Claire from what would mean worse than death to her. I believe him; I will vouch for him. Do you agree, Paul Veniza?”
For an instant the white-haired pawnbroker seemed lost in thought; then he nodded his head gravely.
“In the last few days,” he said slowly, “I have felt that it was no longer my province to masquerade as her father. I know that my influence is powerless. As you have said, it is the crisis, a very terrible crisis, in her life.” He turned toward Hawkins, and held out his hand. “My old friend”—his voice broke—“I pray Heaven to aid you—to aid us all.”
Hawkins' blue eyes filled suddenly with tears.
“You believe me, too, Paul, this time!” he said in a choking voice. “Listen, Paul! I promise! So help me, God—I promise!”
A lump had somehow risen in John Bruce's throat. He turned away, and for a moment there was silence in the room. And then he heard Paul Veniza speak:
“She is dear to us all. Let us call her—unless, my old friend, you would rather be alone.”
“No, no!” Hawkins cried hurriedly. “I—I want you both; but—but not now, don't call her now.” He swept his hands over his shabby, ill-fitting clothes. “I—not like this. I——”
“Yes,” said Paul Veniza gently, “I understand—and you are right. This evening then—at eight o'clock. You will come back here, my old friend, at eight o'clock. And do you remember, it was in this very room, twenty years ago, that——” He did not complete his sentence; the hot tears were streaming unashamed down his cheeks.
John Bruce was staring out of the window, the panes of which seemed curiously blurred.
“Come,” he heard Paul Veniza say.
And then, as the two men reached the door, John Bruce looked around. Hawkins had turned on the threshold. Something seemed to have transfigured the old cab driver's face. It was illumined. There seemed something of infinite pathos in the head held high, in the drooped shoulders resolutely squared.
“My little girl!” said Hawkins tenderly. “To-night at eight o'clock—my little girl!”
BEFORE the rickety washstand and in front of the cracked glass that served as a mirror and was suspended from a nail driven into the wall, Hawkins was shaving himself. Perhaps the light from the wheezing gas-jet was over-bad that evening, or perhaps it was only in playful and facetious mood with the mirror acting the rôle of co-conspirator; Hawkins' chin smarted and was raw; little specks of red showed here and there through the repeated coats of lather which he kept scraping off with his razor. But Hawkins appeared willing to sacrifice even the skin itself to obtain the standard of smoothness which he had evidently set before himself as his goal. And so over and over again he applied the lather, and hoed it off, and tested the result by rubbing thumb and forefinger critically over his face. He made no grimace, nor did he show any irritation at the none-too-keen blade that played havoc with more than the lather, nor did he wince at what must at times have been anything but a painless operation. Hawkins' round, weatherbeaten face and old watery blue eyes smiled into the mirror.
On the washstand beside him lay a large, ungainly silver watch, its case worn smooth with years of service. It had a hunting-case, and it was open. Hawkins glanced at it. It was twenty minutes to eight.
“I got to hurry,” said Hawkins happily. “Just twenty minutes—after twenty years.”
Hawkins laid aside the razor, and washed and scrubbed at his face until it shone; then he went to his trunk and opened it. From underneath the tray he lifted out an old black suit. Perhaps again it was the gas-jet in either baleful or facetious mood, for, as he put on the suit, the cloth in spots seemed to possess, here a rusty, and there a greenish, tinge, and elsewhere to be woefully shiny. Also, but of this the gas-jet could not have been held guilty, the coat and trousers, and indeed the waistcoat, were undeniably most sadly wrinkled.
And now there seemed to be something peculiarly congruous as between the feeble gas-jet, the cracked mirror, the wobbly washstand, the threadbare strip of carpet that lay beside the iron bed, and the old bent-shouldered figure with wrinkled face in wrinkled finery that stood there knotting with anxious, awkward fingers a large, frayed, black cravat about his neck; there seemed to be something strikingly in keeping between the man and his surroundings, a sort of common intimacy, as it were, with the twilight of an existence that, indeed, had never known the full sunlight of high noon.
It was ten minutes to eight.
Hawkins put the silver watch in his pocket, extinguished the spluttering gas-jet, that hissed at him as though in protest at the scant ceremony with which it was treated, and went down the stairs. He stepped briskly out on the street.
“Claire!” said Hawkins radiantly. “My little Claire! I'm her daddy, and she's going to know it. I'm going to get her to call me that—daddy!”
Hawkins walked on halfway along the block, erect, with a quick, firm step, his head high, smiling into every face he met—and turning to smile again, conscious that people as they passed had turned to look back at him. And then very gradually Hawkins' pace slackened, and into his face and eyes there came a dawning anxiety, and the smile was gone.
“I'm kind of forgetting,” said Hawkins presently to himself, “that it ain't just that I'm getting my little girl. I—I'm kind of forgetting her 'rouble. There—there's Crang.”
The old man's face was furrowed now deep with storm and care; he walked still more slowly. He began to mutter to himself. At the corner of the street he raised an old gnarled fist and shook it, clenched, above his head, unconscious and oblivious now that people still turned and looked at him.
And then a little way ahead of him along the street that he must go to reach the one-time pawn-shop of Paul Veniza, his eyes caught the patch of light that filtered out to the sidewalk from under the swinging doors of the familiar saloon, and from the windows in a more brilliant flood.
Hawkins drew in a long breath.
“No, no!” he whispered fiercely. “I will never go in there again—so help me, God! If I did—and—and she knew it was her daddy, it would just break her heart like—like Crang 'll break it.”
He went on, but his footsteps seemed to drag the more now as he approached the saloon. His hand as he raised it trembled; and as he brushed it across his brow it came away wet with sweat.
The saloon was just a yard away from him now.
There was a strange, feverish glitter in the blue eyes. His face was chalky white.
“So help me, God!” Hawkins mumbled hoarsely.
It was five minutes of eight.
Hawkins had halted in front of the swinging doors.
PAUL VENIZA, pacing restlessly about the room, glanced surreptitiously at his watch, and then glanced anxiously at John Bruce.
John Bruce in turn stole a look at Claire. His lips tightened a little. Since she had been told nothing, she was quite unconscious, of course, that it mattered at all because it was already long after eight o'clock; that Hawkins in particular, or any one else in general, was expected to join the little evening circle here in what he, John Bruce, had by now almost come to call his room. His forehead gathered in a frown. What was it that was keeping Hawkins?
Claire's face was full in the light, and as she sat there at the table, busy with some sewing, it seemed to John Bruce that, due perhaps to the perspective of what he now knew, he detected a weariness in her eyes and in sharp lines around her mouth, that he had not noticed before. It was Crang, of course; but perhaps he too—what he had said to her that afternoon—his love—had not made it any easier for her.
Paul Veniza continued his restless pacing about the room.
“Father, do sit down!” said Claire suddenly. “What makes you so nervous to-night? Is anything the matter?”
“The matter? No! No, no; of course not!” said Paul Veniza hurriedly.
“But I'm sure there is,” said Claire, with a positive' little nod of her head. “With both of you, for that matter. Mr. Bruce has done nothing but fidget with the tassel of that dressing gown for the last half hour.”
John Bruce let the tassel fall as though it had suddenly burned his fingers.
“I? Not at all!” he denied stoutly.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Claire, with mock plaintiveness. “What bores you two men are, then! I wish I could send out—what do you call it?—a thought wave, and inspire some one, and most of all Hawkins, to come over here this evening. He, at least, is never deadly dull.”
Neither of the two men spoke.
“You don't know Hawkins, do you, Mr. Bruce?” Claire went on. She was smiling now as she looked at John Bruce. “I mean really know him, of course. He's a dear, quaint, lovable soul, and I'm so fond of him.”
“I'm sure he is,” said John Bruce heartily. “Even from the little I've seen of him I'd trust him with—well, you know”—John Bruce coughed as his words stumbled—“I mean, I'd take his word for anything.”
“Of course, you would!” asserted Claire. “You couldn't think of doing anything else—nobody could. He's just as honest as—as—well, as father there, and I don't know any one more honest.” She smiled at Paul Veniza, and then her face grew very earnest. “I'm going to tell you something about Hawkins, and something that even you never knew, father. Ever since I was old enough to remember any one, I remember Hawkins. And when I got old enough to understand at all, though I could never get him to talk about it, I knew his life wasn't a very happy one, and perhaps I loved him all the more for that reason. Hawkins used to drink a great deal. Everybody knew it. I—I never felt I had the right to speak to him about it, though it made me feel terribly, until—until mother died.”
Claire had dropped her sewing in her lap, and now she picked it up again and fumbled with it nervously.
“I spoke to him then,” she said in a low voice. “I told him how much you needed him, father; and how glad and happy it would make me. And—and I remember so well his words: 'I promise, Claire. I promise, so help me, God, that I will never drink another drop.'” Claire looked up, her face aglow “And I know, no matter what anybody says, that from that day to this, he never has.”
Paul Veniza, motionless now in the center of the room, was staring at her in a sort of numbed fascination.
John Bruce was staring at the door. He had heard, he thought, a step in the outer room.
The door opened. Hawkins stood there. He plucked at his frayed, black cravat, which was awry. He lurched against the jamb, and in groping unsteadily for support his hat fell from his other hand and rolled across the floor.
Hawkins reeled into the room.
“Good—hic!—good-evenin',” said Hawkins thickly.
Claire alone moved. She rose to her feet, but as though her weight were too heavy for her limbs. Her lips quivered.
“Oh, Hawkins!” she cried out pitifully—and burst into tears, and ran from the room.
It seemed to John Bruce that for a moment the room swirled around before his eyes; and then over him swept an uncontrollable desire to get his hands upon this maudlin, lurching creature. Rage, disgust, a bitter resentment, a mad hunger for reprisal possessed him; Claire's future, her faith which she had but a moment gone so proudly vaunted, were all shattered, swept to the winds, by this seedy, dissolute wreck. Her father! No, her shame! Thank God she did not know!
“You drunken beast!” he gritted in merciless fury, and stepped suddenly forward.
But halfway across the room he halted as though turned to stone. Hawkins wasn't lurching any more. Hawkins had turned and closed the door; and Hawkins now, with his face white and drawn, a look in his old blue eyes that mingled agony and an utter hopelessness, sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
It was Paul Veniza who moved now. He went and stood behind the old cabman.
Hawkins looked up.
“You are sober. What does this mean?” Paul Veniza asked heavily.
Hawkins shook his head.
“I couldn't do it,” he said in a broken voice. “And—and I've settled it once for all now. I got to thinking as I came along to-night, and I found out that it wasn't any good for me to swear I wasn't going to touch anything any more. I'm afraid of myself. I—I came near going into the saloon. It—it taught me something, that did; because the only way I could get by was to promise myself I'd go back there after I'd been here.”
Hawkins paused. A flush dyed his cheeks. He turned around and looked at Paul Veniza again, and then at John Bruce.
“You don't understand—neither of you understand. Once I promised Claire that I'd stop, and—and until just now she believed me. And I've hurt her. But I ain't broken her heart. It was only old Hawkins, just Hawkins, who promised her then; it would have been herfatherwho promised her to-night, and—and it ain't any good, I'd have broken that promise, I know it now—and she ain't ever going to share that shame.”
Hawkins brushed his hands across his eyes.
“And then,” he went on, A sudden fierceness in his voice, “suppose she'd had that on top of Crang, 'cause it ain't sure that knowing who I am would have saved her from him! Oh, my God, she'd better be dead! I'd rather see her dead. You're wrong, John Bruce! It wasn't the way. You meant right, and God bless you; but it wasn't the way. I saw it all so clearly after—after I'd got past that saloon; and—and then it was all right for me to promise myself that I'd go back. It wouldn't hurt her none then.”
John Bruce cleared his throat.
“I don't quite understand what you mean by that, Hawkins,” he said a little huskily.
Hawkins rose slowly to his feet.
“I dressed all up for this,” said Hawkins, with a wan smile; “but something's snapped here—inside here.” His hand felt a little aimlessly over his heart. “I know now that I ain't ever going to be worthy; and I know now that she ain't ever to know that I—that I—I'm her old daddy. And so I—I've fixed it just now like you saw so there ain't no going back on it. But I ain't throwing my little girl down. It ain't Claire that's got to be made change her mind—it's Crang.” He raised a clenched fist. “And Crang's going to change it! I can swear tothatand know I'll keep it, so—so help me, God! And when she's rid of him, she ain't going to have no shame and sorrow from me. That's what I meant.”
“Yes,” said John Bruce mechanically.
“I'm going now,” said Hawkins in a low voice. “Around by the other way,” said Paul Veniza softly. “And I'll go with you, old friend.”
For a moment Hawkins hesitated, and then he nodded his head.
No one spoke. Paul Veniza's arm was around Hawkins' shoulders as they left the room. The door closed behind them. John Bruce sat down on the edge of his bed.
FOR a long time John Bruce stared at the closed door; first a little helplessly because the bottom seemed quite to have dropped out of things, and then with set face as the old cabman's words came back to him: “Crang—not Claire.” And at this, a sort of merciless joy crept into his eyes, and he nodded his head in savage satisfaction. Yes, Hawkins had been right in that respect, and—well, it would be easier to deal with Crang!
And then suddenly John Bruce's face softened. Hawkins! He remembered the fury with which the old man had inspired him as the other had reeled into the room, and Clare, hurt and miserable, had risen from her chair. But he remembered Hawkins in a different way now. It was Hawkins, not Claire, who had been hurt. The shabby old figure standing there had paid a price, and as he believed for Claire's sake, that had put beyond his reach forever what must have meant, what did mean, all that he cherished most in life.
John Bruce smiled a little wistfully. Somehow he envied Hawkins, so pitifully unstable and so weak—his strength!
He shook his head in a puzzled way. His thoughts led him on. What a strange, almost incomprehensible, little world it was into which fate, if one wished to call it fate, had flung him! It was an alien world to him. His own life of the past rose up in contrast with it—> not of his own volition, but because the comparison seemed to insist on thrusting itself upon him.
He had never before met men like Hawkins and Paul Veniza. He had met drunkards and pawnbrokers. Very many of them! He had lived his life, or, rather, impoverished it with a spendthrift hand, among just such classes—but he was conscious that it would never have been the poorer for an intimacy with either Hawkins or Paul Veniza.
John Bruce raised his head abruptly. The front door had opened. A moment later a footstep sounded in the outer room, and then upon the stairs. That would be Paul Veniza returning of course, though he hadn't been gone very long; or was it that he, John Bruce, had been sitting here staring at that closed door for a far longer period than he had imagined?
He shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the interruption from his mind, and again the wistful smile flickered on his lips.
So that was why nothing had been said in his hearing about the robbery! Queer people—with their traveling pawn-shop, which was bizarre; and their standards of honesty, and their unaffected hospitality which verged on the bizarre too, because their genuineness and simplicity were so unostentatious—and so rare. And somehow, suddenly, as he sat there with his chin cupped now in his hands, he was not proud of this contrast—himself on the one hand, a drunkard and a pawnbroker on the other!
And then John Bruce raised his head again, sharply this time, almost in a startled way. Was that a cry—in a woman's voice? It was muffled by the closed door, and it was perhaps therefore his imagination; but it——
He was on his feet. It had come again. No door could have shut it out from his ears. It was from Claire upstairs, and the cry seemed most curiously to mingle terror and a passionate anger. He ran across the room and threw the door open. It was strange! It would be Paul Veniza in a new rôle, if the gentle, white-haired old pawnbroker could inspire terror in any one!
A rasping, jeering oath—in a man's voice this time—reached him. John Bruce, a sudden fury whipping his blood into lire, found himself stumbling up the stairs. It wasn't Veniza! His mind seemed to convert that phrase into a sing-song refrain: “It wasn't Veniza! It wasn't Veniza!”
Claire's voice came to him distinctly now, and there was the same terror in it, the same passionate anger that he had distinguished in her cry:
“Keep away from me! I loathe you! It is men like you that prompt a woman to murder! But—but instead, I have prayed God with all my soul to let me die before——” Her voice ended in a sharp cry, a scuffle of feet.
It was Crang in there! John Bruce, now almost at the top of the stairs, was unconscious that he was panting heavily from his exertions, unconscious of everything save a new refrain that had taken possession of his mind: “It was Crang in there! It was Crang in there!”
It was the door just at the right of the landing.
Crang's voice came from there; and the voice was high, like the squeal of an enraged animal:
“You're mine! I've got a right to those red lips, you vixen, and I'm going to have them! A man's got the right to take the girl he's going to marry in his arms! Do you think I'm going to be held off forever? You're mine, and——”
The words were lost again in a cry from Claire, and in the sound of a struggle—a falling chair, the scuffle once more of feet.
John Bruce flung himself across the hall and against the door, It yielded without resistance, and the impetus of his own rush carried him, staggering, far into the room. Two forms were circling there under the gas light as though in the throes of some mad dance—only the face of the woman was deathly white, and her small clenched fists beat frantically at the face of the man whose arms were around her. John Bruce sprang forward. He laughed aloud, unnaturally. His brain, his mind, was whirling; but something soft was grasped in his two encircling hands, and that was why he laughed—because his soul laughed. His fingers pressed tighter. It was Crang's throat that was soft under his fingers.
Suddenly the room swirled around him. A giddiness seemed to seize upon him—and that soft thing in his grip slipped from his fingers and escaped him. He brushed his hand across his eyes. It would pass, of course. It was strange that he should go giddy like that, and that his limbs should be trembling as though with the ague! Again he brushed his hand across his eyes. It would pass off. He could see better now. Claire had somehow fallen to the floor; but she was rising to her knees now, using the side of the bed for support, and——
Her voice rang wildly through the room.
“Look out! Oh, look out!” she cried.
To John Bruce it seemed as though something leaped at him out of space—and struck. The blow, aimed at his side, which was still bandaged, went home. It brought an agony that racked and tore and twisted at every nerve in his body. It wrung a moan from his lips, it brought the sweat beads bursting out upon his forehead—but it cleared his brain.
Yes, it was Doctor Crang—but disreputable in appearance as he had never before seen the man. Crang's clothes were filthy and unkempt, as though the man had fallen somewhere in the mire and was either unconscious or callous of the fact; his hair draggled in a matted way over his forehead, and though his face worked with passion, and the passion brought a curious hectic rose-color to supplant the customary lifeless gray of his cheeks, the eyes were most strangely glazed and fixed.
And again John Bruce laughed—and with a vicious guard swept aside a second blow aimed at his side, and his left fist, from a full arm swing, crashed to the point of Doctor Crang's jaw. But the next instant they had closed, their arms locked around each other's waists, their chins dug hard into each other's shoulders. And they rocked there, and swayed, and lurched, a curious impotence in their ferocity—and toppled to the floor.
John Bruce's grip tightened as Doctor Crang fought madly now to tear himself free—and they rolled over and over in the direction of the door. Hot and cold waves swept over John Bruce. He was weak, pitifully weak, barely a convalescent. But he was content to call it an equal fight. He asked for no other odds than Crang himself had offered. The man for once had over-steeped himself with dope, and was near the point of collapse. He had read that in the other's eyes, as surely as though he had been told. And so John Bruce, between his gasping breaths, still laughed, and rolled over and over—always toward the door.
From somewhere Claire's voice reached John Bruce, imploringly, in terror. Of course! That was why he was trying to get to the door, to get out of her room—through respect for her—to get somewhere where he could finish this fight between one man who could scarcely stand upon his feet through weakness, and another whose drug-shattered body was approaching that state of coma which he, John Bruce, had been made to suffer on the night the robbery had been committed. And by the same needle! He remembered that! Weak in body, his mind was very clear. And so he rolled over and over, always toward the door, because Crang was heedless of the direction they were taking, and he, John Bruce, was probably not strong enough in any other way to force the other out of the room where they could finish this.
They rolled to the threshold—and out into the hall. John Bruce loosened his hold suddenly, staggered to his feet, and leaned heavily for an instant against the jamb of the door. But it was only for an instant. Crang was the quicker upon his feet. Like a beast there was slaver on the other's lips, his hands clawed the air, his face was contorted hideously like the face of one demented, one from whom reason had flown, and with whom maniacal passion alone remained—and from the banister railing opposite the door Crang launched himself forward upon John Bruce again.
“She's mine!” he screamed. “I've been watching you two! I'll teach you! She's mine—mine! I'll finish you for this!”
John Bruce side-stepped the rush, and Crang pitched with his head against the door jamb, but recovering, whirled again, and rushed again. The man began to curse steadily now in a low, abominable monotone. It seemed to John Bruce that he ought to use his fist as a cork and thrust it into the other's mouth to bottle up the vile flow of epithets that included Claire, and coupled his name with Claire's. Claire might hear! The man was raving, insane with jealousy. John Bruce struck. His fist found its mark on Crang's lips, and found it again; but somehow his arm seemed to possess but little strength, and to sag back at the elbow from each impact. He writhed suddenly as Crang reached him with another blow on his side.
And then they had grappled and locked together again, and were swaying like drunken men, now to this side, and now to that, of the narrow hall.
It could not last. John Bruce felt his knees giving way beneath him. He had under-estimated Crang's resistance to the over-dose of drug. Crang was the stronger—and seemed to be growing stronger every instant. Or was it his own increasing weakness?
Crang's fist with a short-arm jab smashed at John Bruce's wounded side once more. The man struck nowhere else—always, with the cunning born of hell, at the wounded side. John Bruce dug his teeth into his lips. A wave of nausea swept over him. He felt his senses leaving him, and he clung now to the other, close, tight-pressed, as the only means of protecting his side.
He forced himself then desperately to a last effort. There was one chance left, just one. In the livid face, in the hot, panting breath with which the other mouthed his hideous profanity, there was murder. Over his shoulder, barely a foot away, John Bruce glimpsed the staircase. He let his weight sag with seeming helplessness upon Crang. It brought Crang around in a half circle. Crang's back was to the stairs now. John Bruce let his hands slip slowly from their hold upon the other, as though the last of his strength was ebbing away. He accepted a vicious blow on his wounded side as the price that he must pay, a blow that brought his chin crumpling down upon his breast—and then with every ounce of remaining strength he hurled himself at Crang, and Crang's foot stumbled out into space over the topmost stair, and with a scream of infuriated surprise the man pitched backward.
John Bruce grasped with both hands at the banister for support. Something went rolling, rolling, rolling down the stairs with queer, dull thumps like a sack of meal. His hands slipped from the banister, and he sat limply down on the topmost step and laughed. He laughed because that curious looking bundle at the bottom there began a series of fruitless efforts to roll back up the stairs again.
And then the front door opened. He could see it from where he sat, and Paul Veniza—that was Paul Veniza, wasn't it?—stepped into the room below, and cried out, and ran toward the bundle at the foot of the stairs.
John Bruce felt some one suddenly hold him back from pitching down the stairs himself, but nevertheless he kept on falling and falling into some great pit that grew darker and darker the farther he went down, and this in spite of some one who tried to hold him back, and—and who had a face that looked like Claire's, only it was as—as white as driven snow. And as he descended into the blackness some one screamed at him: “I'll finish you for this!” And screamed it again—only the voice kept growing fainter. And—and then he could neither see nor hear any more.
When John Bruce opened his eyes again he was lying on his cot. A little way from him, their backs turned, Claire and Paul Veniza were whispering earnestly together. He watched them for a moment, and gradually as his senses became normally acute again he caught Claire's words:
“He is not safe here for a moment. Father, we must get him away. I am afraid. There is not a threat Doctor Crang made to-night but that he is quite capable of carrying out.”
“But he is safe for to-night,” Paul Veniza answered soothingly. “I got Crang home to bed, and as I told you, he is too badly bruised and knocked about to move around any before morning at least.”
“And yet I am afraid,” Claire insisted anxiously. “Fortunately Mr. Bruce's wound hasn't opened, and he could be moved. Oh, if Hawkins only hadn't——”
She stopped, and twisted her hands together nervously.
Paul Veniza coughed, averted his head suddenly and in turning met John Bruce's eyes—and stared in a startled way.
“Claire!” John Bruce called softly.
“Oh!” she cried, and ran toward him. “You——”
“Yes,” smiled John Bruce. “And I have been listening. Why isn't it safe for me to stay here any longer? On account of Crang's wild threats?”
“Yes,” she said in a low voice.
John Bruce laughed.
“But you don't believe them, do you?” he asked. “At least, I mean, you don't take them literally.” Claire's lips were trembling.
“There is no other way to take them.” She was making an effort to steady her voice. “It is not a question of believing them. I know only too well that he will carry them out if he can. You are not safe here, or even in New York now—but less safe here in this house than anywhere else.”
John Bruce came up on his elbow.
“Then, Claire, isn't this the end?” he demanded passionately. “You know him for what he is. You do not love him, for I distinctly heard you tell him that you loathed him, as I went up the stairs. Claire, I am not asking for myself now—only for you. Tell me, tell Paul Veniza here, to whom it will mean so much, that you have now no further thought of marriage with that”—John Bruce's voice choked—“with Crang.” She shook her head.
“I cannot tell you that,” she said dully, “for I am going to marry Doctor Crang.”
John Bruce's face hardened. He looked at Paul Veniza. The old pawnbroker had his eyes on the floor, and was ruffling his white hair helplessly with his fingers.
“Why?” John Bruce asked.
“Because I promised,” Claire said slowly.
“But a promise like that!” John Bruce burst out. “A promise that you will regret all your life is——”
“No!” Her face was half averted; her head was lowered to hide the tears that suddenly welled into her eyes. “No; it is a promise that I—that I am glad now I made.”
“Glad!” John Bruce sat upright. She had turned her head away from the cot. He could not see her face. “Glad!” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes.” Her voice was scarcely audible.
For a moment John Bruce stared at her; then a bitter smile tightened his lips, and he lay back on the cot, and turned on his side away from both Claire and Paul Veniza.
When John Bruce looked around again, only Paul Veniza was in the room.
“I don't understand,” said Paul Veniza—he was still ruffling his hair, still with his eyes on the floor.
“I do,” said John Bruce grimly. “Claire is right. It isn't safe for me to stay here, and I'll go to-night. If only Hawkins hadn't——” He laughed a little harshly. “But I'll go to-night, just the same. A taxi will do quite as well.”