David hurried off toward the car-line, bent on reaching Joey's home before that worthy retired for the night.
At the top of a flight of stone steps leading to the doors of an imposing mansion across the street from the Portman home a motionless figure sat, as bleak as the shadows in which it was shrouded. Like a malevolent gargoyle it glowered out upon the deserted street; a tense, immovable chin rested in a pair of clenched hands, knees supporting the elbows. This desolate, forbidding figure had been there for an hour or more—ever since Christine's return from the concert. Not once were the burning eyes removed from the lighted windows across the way. At last, long after the footsteps of the anxious Virginian had died away in the night, and the lights were extinguished in the house opposite, the silent watcher moved for the first time. Slowly he came to his feet, his eyes still upon the solitary window in which a light had lingered long after all the others were gone.
"Well, they're through discussing me," muttered Tom Braddock, thinking aloud. Shivering, as if from a mighty chill, although the night was warm, he stalked down from his perch and went swiftly up the street, a gaunt, broad-shouldered figure whose step seemed to suggest purpose more than stealth.
As he slunk past the approach to a basement hard-by, a stealthy figure slipped out from the recess and kept pace with him, not twenty feet behind. A block farther up the street this second watcher quickened his pace. He came alongside the man ahead.
"Hello, Brad," fell upon the ears of the stalked. He betrayed no surprise, no sign of alarm. He did not check his pace, nor look around.
"Confound you, Dick," he said, as if pronouncing sentence, "if you don't quit dogging me like this I'll kill you, so help me God."
"You might have known I'd be somewhere around," said the other quietly. They were now side by side, gaunt, slouching figures, both of them.
"I thought I'd given you the slip."
"Umph," was the expressive comment.
"What did you follow me over here to-night for?" demanded Braddock fiercely, after thirty steps.
"You know why, Brad. Don't ask."
"This is my affair," went on the big man. "I was doing no harm, sitting across there. Can't a man sneak off for a single look at his own child—in the dark, at that—without being hounded by—Say, you must stop dogging me, d' you hear? I'm not a rat. I'm a human being. I've got feelings. I wanted to have a look at her. She's my girl and—"
"Not so loud, Brad. Remember who you are with. You are in bad company, old man. Don't draw attention to the fact. Take a word of advice from me. Keep away from that house. Don't—"
"I don't want to hear anything more out of you," grated Braddock. "I know what I'm doing. I'm living up to my promise, ain't I? Didn't I say I'd see Mary before I—Say," he broke off incontinently, his thoughts leaping backward, "that was my girl that said good night to the swells back there—mine! Did you see how prettily she was dressed? Did you hear how sweet her voice was? I—I—" Something came up in the man's throat to cut off the words; and a long silence fell between them.
Not until they were turning into Fourth Avenue did Dick Cronk speak again. Somehow he felt the emotion that struggled in the breast of the man beside him. For the first time in his life he was sorry for him.
"Where are you going now, Tom?" he asked, knowing full well what the spiritless answer would be.
"To that hell-hole of a place you call home," said Braddock. Dick slipped his hand through the other's arm; they turned oft into one of the cross streets, wending their way through the sodden community, one with his head erect, the other with his chin on his breast, his hands in his coat pockets.
Half an hour later a cab stopped at a corner not far from a Pell Street intersection. Two men got down and picked their way through the vile street, searching out the house numbers as they progressed. They passed the all-night dives and brothels, whence came the sounds of unrestrained and unrefined revelry, and came at last to a spot beneath a huge wooden boot that hung suspended above the door of the most unholy structure in the narrow street. A man in his shirt sleeves sat back in the shadow of the tumbledown stoop, smoking a pipe. At his left a narrow, black passage led down between two squalid buildings, one of which was dark, the other lighted so that the vicious revelers within might see and be seen.
The uncertain, timorous actions of the strangers in Thieves' Alley brought a fantastic smile to the lips of the smoker. He watched them as they looked up at the boot and compared notes in rather subdued tones.
"This must be the place," said one of the men. There was no mistaking the note of disgust in his voice.
"Looking for some one, gents?" demanded the smoker, without rising from the stool on which he sat leaning against the wall.
"Is this No. 24—Hello! It's Dick!"
"Ain't you afraid to be seen down here, Joey?" asked the man on the stool, chuckling.
"It's worth an honest man's life to be seen 'ere," said Joey Noakes, in hushed tones. "God 'elp 'im as can't 'elp 'isself if he ever strolls in 'ere unawares."
"It's rather late in the night for any one to be about," said Dick Cronk. "Still, I've been expecting you, gents. That's why I'm sitting out here, takin' things easy—and makin' things easy for you. If you don't mind I'll keep my seat, David. It ain't wise to be seen hobnobbin' with swell gents at this time o' night—in Hell's Kitchen particularly. I know what you're here for.He'sback there asleep. Don't worry. I've got him safely sidetracked."
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the narrow passage. The others looked down that filthy corridor and shuddered.
"What a place!" muttered David Jenison.
"Wot 'as Brad been up to to-night?" demanded Joey.
Without changing his position, Dick Cronk, in as few words as possible, told them of Braddock's vigil.
"Don't hang around here a minute longer than you have to," he said in conclusion. "There are a hundred eyes on you right now. You don't see 'em, but they're looking, just the same. I thought you'd be blame' fools enough to come, so I waited up. Something told me you would go to Joey's when you left her, kid, and you'd make him come along to hunt me out. Brad's safe, and he's not going to do anything just yet. So go home and go to bed. I'll see you to-morrow and we'll arrange for a time when she can talk with him. She'll see him, won't she?"
"Of course. She is eager to see him. I am to bring him to her as soon as—"
"We've got to handle him carefully or—" began Dick.
Joey interrupted him. "The devil's to pay in another direction, Dick," he said. "Bob Grand 'as 'eard that Brad's out and that he's been 'anging around his 'otel, nasty-like. Who should come to my 'ouse in a cab at nine o'clock to-night but Bob Grand 'isself. He finds me alone, Ruby being off with 'er young man. When I sees who is coming up my steps, I almost keels over. The first words he says took my breath away. I was getting ready to kick 'im into the gutter when he puts a check on my leg, curious-like, by remarking that he's looking for Tom Braddock. He came to arsk me where he could be found. I told 'im I didn't know, and, if I did, I'd be hanged if I'd tell 'im. We 'ad some pretty sharp words, you may believe. But he took all the impudence out of me by announcing most plainly that he understood Brad wanted to kill 'im and that I'd best 'ave a care how I acted, because my 'ouse was being watched by secret service men. There was a lot more, but I 'aven't time to tell you. The upshot of it is, he's going to 'ave Brad nabbed and put where he can't do any 'arm. And, see 'ere, Dick, I don't want to be mixed up in this business. You've got to get Brad out of town to-night. He's done for now and—"
Dick Cronk interrupted his old friend with a snarl of impatience. "Get him away yourself! I'm doing the best I know how. He won't leave of his own free will. He's here to do that man and he won't be put off. And what's more, Bob Grand ought to get it good and hard. Somebody ought to spike him, and who's got a better right than Tom Braddock? I'm ashamed of you, Joey! If you'd been half a man you'd 'a' beat his head off to-night when he put his foot on your doorstep, after what he put up to Ruby. I—I wish I'd been there!"
The bowl of the clay pipe dropped to the bricks. He literally had ground the stem in two with his teeth.
"Go home now—both of you," he said, a moment later, following his own awkward laugh. "You can't afford to be seen here. I'll look out for Brad. The Colonel won't come here a-lookin' for him, you can bet your life on that. You'll hear from me to-morrow. Maybe you think I ain't sick of this business? If it wasn't for you, Davy, I'd cut it in a minute and dig for the wooly West, where Mr. Barnum and Mr. Forepaugh are dying for my society. Move along now! Don't block the sidewalk! Can't you see the ladies want to pass?"
Two maudlin women of the underworld lurched by, with coarse, ribald comments on the "swells." David felt himself grow hot with shame and disgust. After their laughter had died away he turned to the grinning Dick.
"But we must do something to-night—" he began imploringly.
Dick lifted his hand. "Correct," he said. "We must do some sleeping." He strode to the mouth of the forbidding passage. A light from a saloon window shone out upon a long flight of rickety steps at the farther end, leading up to the darkness above. "See that stairway? Well, I wouldn't advise you to follow me up there. It ain't a Romeo and Juliet balcony, gents. Good night!"
He turned into the passage with a wave of the hand. They saw him pass up through the shaft of light from the window and disappear in the shadows. Then they hurried away from the foul place, almost running to the cab at the corner.
David did not sleep that night. He tossed on his bed, beset by the direst anxiety and dread, his eyes wide open and staring. He dozed off at six, but was wide awake before seven, when he arose and partook of a hurried, half-eaten breakfast. It was not likely that he would hear from Dick Cronk before the middle of the forenoon. Until then he was to be harassed by doubts and fears that would not be easy to suppress in his present unquiet frame of mind. While he was obliged to stand idle and impotent, the very foundation of all the future happiness of the girl he loved might be irreparably shattered. Silent, deadly, purposeful forces were working toward that end. Her mother would, no doubt, prepare her in a way for the crash, but there always would be the memory of the cruel blow that might have been prevented.
He crossed into Madison Square, taking a seat where he could watch the entrance to his hotel, though the hour was so early that it seemed sheer folly to expect Dick Cronk. A dozen times in the first half-hour he looked at his watch. Would the hands never reach nine o'clock? He knew that Dick would make his approach slyly. Perhaps if he returned to his room he would find him there. It would not be an unusual circumstance, he recalled.
Had Colonel Grand's detectives swooped down upon Tom Braddock? Was Christine's father already in jail? Was Grand in a position to hold a new club over the heads of the two women? Were the newspapers preparing to revel in the great story—
He was in the midst of these direful questions when some one tapped him lightly on the shoulder from behind. He turned and glanced upward, his nerves a-tingle.
"Dick!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet.
"Sit down!" commanded the pickpocket warily.
David dropped to the bench, his eyes fastened on the white, drawn face of the pickpocket. A thick, white bandage was wrapped around his forehead, partially hidden by the slouch hat he wore. The man seemed faint and unsteady on his feet.
"I say, Dick," cried David, "what has happened? You are hurt. Who—"
With a rigid grin Dick put his hand to his head.
"Braddock," he said succinctly.
"You don't mean—Tell me what has happened? Wait! Do you require the attention of a surgeon?"
"Sit still, kid. I'm all right. You might pass me a quarter or something, just to make people think I'm boning you for a breakfast. Thanks! Well, Brad's gone."
"Gone?"
"He cracked me good and hard, that's what he did. I told you he wouldn't be held down long. He's in no mood to be kind to them that are trying to be kind to him. He's past all that. He means business, Brad does. This morning about six he got up. I was watchin' him. He said he was going over to see his wife. He said he wanted to see her before Christine was awake, or out of bed. I told him they wouldn't let him in at that time of day. He said he'd get in or know the reason why. Then he opened up on me about all of us trying to manage his affairs for him. I tried to quiet him. But the devil of it was he was quiet enough. He wastooquiet. It looked bad. When he started for the door I took hold of him. He—well, he shoved me off. When I jumped in front of the door he picked up a chair and let me have it over the head. I didn't know anything for a long time. When I came to he was gone. Jimmie Parsons, who was in the room with us all the time, also tried to stop him after he biffed me. Jimmie's got two wonderful black eyes as a result."
"The man must be insane!" cried David, aghast. Dick shook his head. "Not a bit of it. He's the sanest man I know."
"Where has he gone? You said he started for Mrs. Braddock's? Great heavens, Dick, he may do her bodily harm! He may have shot her down in cold—"
"Easy, easy! He ain't likely to do anything like that until after he's got Bob Grand."
"Then he will shoot Bob Grand this morning, mark my words. He—"
"He won't shoot anybody. He hasn't any gun. He says he don't need one. If he gets Grand, it won't be with a weapon of any kind. That's what he says, and he means it. If Bob Grand dies from a bullet, you can bet your life it won't come from Tom Braddock. But all this can wait. I stopped off at Joey's. He sent Ruby down to Mr. Portman's at once, and he's gone over to keep watch around the hotel where Grand stops. The thing for you to do is to make tracks for Portman's. I'm going to—"
But David did not wait to hear what Dick intended to do. He was rushing off to hail a passing hansom.
Dick followed him to the curb. "If you see Brad tell him there's no hard feelings, Davy. It was a dirty smash, but I deserve it for not ducking. And say, be careful how you tackle him. Remember that thing about wisdom being better than—what's the word? Nerve?"
The hansom turned and sped down Fifth Avenue with its nervous passenger. Dick shook his head wearily. Then he smiled. From his coat pocket he slyly extracted a shining revolver. Three minutes before it had been in David Jenison's pocket. "He's better off without a thing like this," mused the clever philosopher.
Thomas Braddock rang the door-bell at the Portman home shortly after eight o'clock. He was perfectly calm and in full possession of himself. A brisk manservant opened the door and faced the strange caller.
"I want to see Mrs. Braddock," said the man in the vestibule.
"Call again," said the servant curtly.
"Just a minute, please," said Braddock. He did not offer to resist the closing of the door in his face. There was something in his tone, however, that caused the footman to hesitate. He took a second, surprised look at the gray, set face of the caller.
"Mrs. Braddock is occupied," he announced.
"You mean she isn't up yet. I'll wait," remarked Braddock, still very quietly. The man stared hard at him, suddenly struck by the pallor of his face. His eyes swept the grim figure in the ill-fitting suit of jeans.
"What do you want? Can't you leave a message?"
"Want? I want to see her." The footman glanced back over his shoulder as if searching for some one on whom he could shift an amazing responsibility. Recalling his dignity, he essayed to close the door in Braddock's face.
"I am her husband," announced the caller, his hands still in his pockets. The servant's hand was stayed.
"Won't you call again?" he temporized. "I don't quite understand. It don't go down very easy, I'll say that. At any rate, you can't see her now, no matter who you are. She was up all night with Miss Braddock, who took sick suddenly. Mrs. Braddock has just laid down for a—"
"Christine sick?" demanded Braddock. The new note in his voice commanded attention. "It—it can't be serious. She was all right when she came in last night. What's the matter with her? Speak up! What does the doctor say?"
"They didn't call a doctor."
He was surprised to see the ominous glare fade from Braddock's eyes. They wavered and then fell. An uneasy, mirthless laugh cracked in his throat; then his lip quivered ever so slightly—Brooks could have sworn to it. His hand shook as it went up to fumble the square chin in evident perplexity. For a moment Thomas Braddock stood there, reflecting, swayed by an emotion so unexpected that he was a long time in accounting for it. Indecision succeeded the arrogant assurance that had marked his advances. He looked up quickly, suspecting the lie that might have been offered as an excuse to get rid of him.
"Are you lying to me?" he demanded.
"Sir!"
Braddock's mind, long acute, worked swiftly. He went back of the servant's statement with an intelligence that grasped the true conditions quite as plainly as if they had been laid bare before him. Christine was ill. No physician had been called. He knew what the servant could not, by any chance, have known. He knew why Mary Braddock sat up with her daughter. A doctor? As if a doctor could prescribe for the affliction that beset her! Too well he now understood what had transpired in that upstairs room. A thing of horror had come to rack the soul of that happy, beautiful girl—had come suddenly because the time was ripe. She was suffering becausehewas near!Heunderstood.
A tense, bitter oath struggled through his lips.
"Well, it's time she knew," he muttered in self-justification. Impelled by a strange anxiety—perhaps it was apprehension—he strained his eyes in the effort to penetrate the depths of the unfriendly hall at the servant's back. His ear seemed bent to catch the sounds of sobs or moans that he knew must reach him if he listened closely.
He again questioned the servant with his eyes, a long, intense scrutiny that confused the man.
Then he turned away.
"All right," he said sullenly, putting his hands into his pockets once more and drawing up his shoulders as if he were cold. "I'll come again. Tell Mrs. Braddock I was here and that I'll be back in a couple of hours." Another glance through the half-open door, over the footman's shoulder, and he stalked off, his jaw set, his hands clenched in the pockets of his coat. At the foot of the steps he shot a quick, involuntary glance upward, taking in the second story windows. The wondering servant looked after him until he turned the corner below.
Brooks had seen men with the prison pallor in their faces before.
He was not long in apprising Mrs. Braddock of the stranger's visit. She was with Christine when he made the unhappy announcement. If he expected a demonstration of concern or surprise, he was disappointed.
"I will see Mr. Braddock when he returns," said his mistress quietly. Brooks blinked two or three times, his only tribute to the stupendous shock he had experienced.
Thomas Braddock walked to the Battery. There he sat down on one of the benches and glowered out upon the blue waters of the bay for an hour or more. No muscle moved in his face. He waited with a patience that was three years old.
When David drove up to the Portman place, Mrs. Braddock herself arose from one of the chairs in the narrow stone porch at the top of the steps. She, too, had been waiting, but not for the young man who dashed up the steps.
"He has been here," she said, as she gave him her hand. The tenseness of the clasp revealed the strain that was upon her. He noted the pallor in her cheek, the dread in her eyes. The hot glare of the June sun seemed to bring out gray hairs he had never seen before. He had not thought of her as growing old until now.
"Yes?" he cried anxiously. "Where is he? I tried to get here in time. Did he—"
"Sit down, David—here, please, behind the balustrade. I am waiting out here for him. He went off in that direction. I've been watching for nearly an hour. He is coming back."
She resumed her chair, facing the direction which Braddock had taken.
"You—you sent him away?"
"I did not see him. You must not think, David, that I am afraid to see him. I am nervous, upset, but it really isn't fear. Christine—Christine knows everything. I told her last night. She is—well, you can imagine, she is very unhappy. Everything looks black to her. I did not hide anything. She is crushed."
"Where is she? I must see her. I can comfort her, Mrs. Braddock. Let me see her before he comes back." He was standing over her, his face working.
"She will not see you, David," she said in dull tones. He started. "What do you mean? Shemustsee me." "Her father was in the penitentiary." That was all; but it told all there was to tell.
It required a moment or two for comprehension. Then he cried out reproachfully: "Does she think that will make any difference in my—"
She held up her hand. "She knows it won't. That's what distresses her. I am afraid, David, after all, you have brought your honor to a wretched market. We are what we are, we Braddocks. We can't look beyond our environment. You cannot marry a convict's daughter. It was bad enough before. I should have seen all this. But I was blind only to her happiness. We can't—"
His jaws were set. "Mrs. Braddock," he said, his voice quivering with decision, "I am not going to be put off like this. You may as well understand that, first and last. I love her. I want her. She loves me, thank God. It won't be so hard to make her understand how impossible it is for anything to come between us. She is going to marry me, Mary Braddock."
A great light leaped into her eyes, even as she shook her head. The words of protest she would have uttered failed to pass her lips. She reached out as if to clasp his hand, a movement as involuntary as it was instinctive. He had turned and was facing the closed portals behind which his heart's desire was beating all joy and hope out of her poor tormented soul. The tears rushed to his eyes.
"I can't stand it," he cried. "She must hear the wordsnow—this is the time for me to go to her and say that I love her better than all the world. Nothing else matters."
In his eagerness he was starting for the door when a sharp cry fell from her lips. He hesitated, struck by the note of consternation in the cry.
A carriage had drawn up at the curb in front of the house. A face appeared at the open window of the vehicle, a never-to-be-forgotten face that brought to mind the African gazelle in Van Slye's.
David turned. For a moment he could not believe his eyes. He stood rigid in the paralysis of stupefaction. Then a cold perspiration started from every pore of his body. He sprang to Mrs. Braddock's side. She was even then peering down the street, a great fear in her heart, every fiber quivering with alarm.
Colonel Grand was assisting his daughter to the sidewalk. Already he had lifted his hat and sent a nauseous smile to the woman above. David's gaze followed hers in quest of a more sinister actor who might even then be coming upon the scene for the tragic climax.
The young man recognized the necessity for quick action. Colonel Grand, whatever his motive for appearing so unexpectedly at the Portman house, must be turned away without ceremony or consideration. At any minute Thomas Braddock might return. A tragedy would be the result; that was inevitable.
David started down the steps, passing the rigid, staring woman at the top. He was vaguely aware of Roberta Grand's bow and of the look of annoyance in the Colonel's face. Half-way down he called out:
"Colonel Grand, you must not stay here—not a second longer. I will explain if you will let me ride with you for a couple of blocks."
Grand advanced.
"Young man," he said coldly, "I am here to see Mrs. Braddock on a matter of importance. You will do well to subside."
David flushed angrily. "But Mrs. Braddock does not care to see you. She—"
Grand came on up the steps, ignoring Jenison, addressing himself to Mary Braddock.
"I have come to discuss Tom with you, Mary," he said. She started at the use of her name, a hot wave of anger rushing over her.
"Go away!" she cried, in low, intense tones. "How dare you come here, Colonel Grand? Go!"
He stopped, raised his hat, shrugged his shoulders in a deprecating manner, and then quickly lifted his free hand to check the approach of the young man who was ominously near at hand.
"I fancy it will be best for all concerned if we avoid tableaux. Still, I will go away if you see fit to send me—"
"I do see fit! Go!"
Roberta Grand was staring at the speaker from the bottom of the steps.
"Don't haggle with her, father," she cried venomously. "Bring her to time!"
"You have met my daughter, Mrs. Braddock?" said Grand in his most suave manner. "What are you looking at, Jenison?" he demanded, suddenly noting the young man's frozen stare, directed down the street.
David passed his hand over his damp brow and turned to look helplessly into Mary Braddock's face.
Tom Braddock was standing across the street at the corner below, clutching a lamp-post for support. He was staring with wide open eyes at the group on the steps.
She had seen Braddock turn the corner. Her eyes were closed now, as if to shut out the disaster that must rush down upon them in the next instant; her thrumming ears waited for the sound of running footsteps and the crack of a revolver. David started up the steps toward her.
"It will be best for you to hear what I have come to say," observed Grand, ignorant of the peril that lay behind him. He resumed his progress up the steps, Roberta following close behind.
"For Heaven's sake, man, go while you can," cried David hoarsely. "Don't you see—"
"Mary, will you listen to me? We've got to come to an understanding concerning Tom. He's in town. We must come to some agreement, you and I, as to whether a scandal is to follow his arrest—a scandal which will blast you and Christine forever in New—"
"Is there no way to stop him?" groaned Mary Braddock, opening her eyes to look again upon the sinister figure across the way. She had not heard a word of Colonel Grand's minacious overture.
"By this time Braddock has been taken by the police,—as Sam Brafford, the ex-convict and yeggman. Is he to go up this time as the father of Christine—"
David sprang to his side, seizing his right arm in a grip of iron. In the same movement he whirled the older man about and pointed toward the figure at the corner.
"It's Braddock!" he hissed. "Now we're in for it. By heaven, he ought to kill you!"
"Braddock!" gasped Grand. "Why, he is in jail—" The words died on his lips. He recognized the man. His eyes bulged, his grayish face seemed to freeze stiff, with the lower lip and tongue hanging loose.
Transfixed, he saw Thomas Braddock straighten up, relinquish his grip on the iron post, and start diagonally across the street, his head bent forward, his lower jaw extended. His unswerving gaze never left the face of Robert Grand.
"Get into the carriage, Roberta," shouted Grand, suddenly alive to his peril. He trembled, but he was not the man to run from an adversary, nor was he likely to sell his life cheaply. With a quick, desperate tug, he jerked himself free of David's grasp. His hand flew to his inside coat pocket.
Thomas Braddock had reached the curb. Miss Grand stood directly in his path, petrified by terror. Like a cat he sprang forward, cunningly putting her body between him and Grand, making it impossible for the latter to shoot without imperiling the life of his daughter.
A revolver gleamed in the hand of the man on the steps.
David's wits worked quickly. It may have been that he was inspired. Instead of attempting to grasp or disarm Colonel Grand, he decided to let the situation take care of itself for the moment. Neither of the men could make a move to attack the other.
"Here, I say!" gasped the Colonel. "He can shoot me down like a dog. Stop him, Jenison! Don't you see I can't protect myself?"
David took advantage of the knowledge that Braddock was unarmed.
"Colonel Grand," he cried out sharply, "if you attempt to kill that man I'll see that you suffer for it."
"But, damn it, he is here to kill me! I have the right to kill in self-defense if—"
"Then why doesn't he kill you? He has you in his power. He is not here to attack you. That must be plain, even to you. Mr. Braddock has come to see his wife before leaving the city."
He caught the cunning gleam in Tom Braddock's eyes. His heart gave a great bound of relief. The man was not so mad as to court certain death by attacking his enemy under the present conditions. Christine's father was perfectly cool; he was absolute master of himself. Nothing could be farther from the mind of Thomas Braddock than the desire to be shot by Robert Grand. It was his one purpose in life to kill, not to be killed. He realized that he was powerless. Grand could shoot him down like a dog—an inglorious end to the one spark of ambition left in him. The workings of Braddock's mind were as plain to Jenison as if the man were expounding them by word of mouth.
"Before leaving the country," David substituted. The ghost of a sneer flickered about Braddock's lips. He spoke for the first time, hoarsely, but with wonderful calmness.
"I came to see Mary," he said. "You'd better go, Grand. I don't want anything to do with you. It won't be healthy for either of us if we see too much of each other."
"Stand out from behind my daughter, you coward," shouted Grand.
"Don't shoot, father!" screamed the girl, terror-stricken.
"Go ahead!" said Braddock grimly.
The driver of the cab was looking wildly about in quest of a policeman. Two women had stopped on the opposite side of the street, and were staring at the group in front of the Portman mansion.
"Shall I call a cop?" called out the cabby, addressing himself to the one person who seemed to belong on the premises—Mrs. Braddock.
"No! No! Take them away!" she cried. "That's all I ask of you!"
"Wait!" said Colonel Grand, master of himself once more. "We may just as well understand each other. I had an object in coming here. It concerns this man. He—"
David broke in peremptorily. It was time to bring the distressing scene to an end, if it were possible to do so without inviting the actual catastrophe. He realized that he would have to act quickly in order to anticipate the curious crowd and to be ahead of the police.
"Colonel Grand, you have put yourself in an unpleasant, uncalled-for position," he said. "I am of half a mind to hold you here until the police arrive. Cabby, I call upon you to witness, with all the rest of us, that Colonel Grand has drawn a revolver with the design to kill an unarmed, unoffending man. You have seen everything. Mr. Braddock saved his life only by—"
"Unarmed!" shouted Colonel Grand. "Why, he is armed to the teeth. He's after me. He's going to kill me on sight, I swear—"
"What is to prevent him from doing so now, Colonel?" demanded David. "You are in a position where you cannot shoot. He could drill you full of holes if that were his intention. Mr. Braddock, are you armed?"
"No," said Braddock. "Do you suppose, if I had a gun, I would be standing behind this girl?"
"Do you hear that, cabby? Do you, Colonel? Now, I want to say just this to you, sir; I am going to the nearest police station and swear out a warrant for your arrest. I can't hold you myself, but I can do the next best thing. I can land you in jail for attempted murder."
Colonel Grand stared at him with uncomprehending eyes, a sickly smile on his lips.
"You know better than—" he began.
David cut him short with an exclamation. Then he walked out to the curb, opened the cab door and coolly motioned for Colonel Grand to step down and enter.
Mary Braddock waited no longer. She sped down the steps, passing the slow-moving, stupefied Colonel, and ruthlessly shoved Roberta Grand to one side, taking her stand in front of her husband, facing his foe.
"It isn't necessary for my husband to shield himself behind your flesh and blood, Colonel Grand," she said, her head erect. "Now, if you care to shoot, you have both of us at your mercy."
"I came to propose a peaceful—" began the Colonel, baffled.
"Step lively, Colonel Grand!" commanded Jenison. "Permit me, Miss Grand."
"Don't touch me," hissed Roberta, disdaining his assistance. The look she bestowed upon her father, as she passed him, was not a pleasant one. He had promised her a different reception at the Portman home, secretly depending on his power to force Mrs. Braddock to welcome an armistice, no matter how distasteful it may have been to her. He had not anticipated the outcome. Miss Grand accompanied him, meanly it is true, in the hope that she might gloat over the Braddocks in their humiliation.
She entered the cab, frightened and dismayed. Her father, still grasping his pistol, followed her. He cast a defeated, almost appealing glance at the uncompromising face of the young man who held open the door.
"You can't obtain a warrant for me," he said nervously. "I have the law on my side. I can prove that this man threatened—"
"Drive on, cabby," said David relentlessly. "I've taken your number. You will be called on as a witness. Don't argue! I mean it!"
Muttering excitedly, the driver, without the customary "where to?" started off down the street. Colonel Grand leaned forward to send a menacing scowl toward the group on the sidewalk. He smiled sardonically when he saw that Mary Braddock still kept her place in front of her husband, evidently afraid that he would fire from the window of the departing cab. Then he called out his instructions to the driver and settled back in the seat.
The gritting of Tom Braddock's teeth did not escape the tortured ears of his wife. She looked up quickly. He was glaring after the cab, a look of appalling ferocity in his face.
"Come into the house, Tom," she said quickly.
He turned on her with a snarl.
"I won't keep you long," he grated. "I've got other business on hand." It occurred to him to tender David his meed of praise. "That was pretty sharp in you, David, staving him off like that. I owe you something for doing that."
"I knew you were unarmed. You would have had no chance."
They were going up the steps, Braddock between the others. Brooks, the footman, was holding the door open. He had been a politely interested witness to the startling encounter.
Braddock seemed to be studying each successive slab of stone as he ascended. The muscles of his jaw were working. He seemed to have formed a habit of jamming his hands far down into his coat pockets.
"That was the only chancehe'llever have," was his sententious remark. No other word was uttered until they were inside the house, Mrs. Braddock's gasp of relief could not have been called a sigh.
"Thank God!" she breathed, sinking upon the hall seat and clasping her clenched hands to her breast.
Braddock shot a quick glance up the broad stairway. The surroundings were strange to him,—he had never been inside the home of his father-in-law before,—but he knew that Christine was somewhere overhead.
"How's Christine, Mary?" he asked roughly.
"She is wretchedly unhappy, Tom."
"Umph!" was the way he received it, but a close observer might have seen the flutter of his eyelids and the sharp, convulsive movement in the coat pockets. "I don't want her to see me," he said.
"She wants to see you—"
He faced her angrily. "No! I've got to take care of my nerves. I can't take any chances on having 'em upset. See here, David," he said, lowering his voice and speaking with deadly emphasis, "that talk of yours about swearing out a warrant for Grand don't go, do you understand? I don't want him to be arrested. I don't want him locked up. I want him to befree. He'd be too safe behind the bars?"
The sound of a door opening above came to them at this juncture, followed by the swift rush of feet and the rustle of skirts. Braddock looked up and instinctively drew back into an obscured recess at his left.
Christine's face appeared over the railing above. She leaned far forward and called out in the high, tense tones of extreme nervousness:
"Father! Is it you? Are you there?"
There was no response.
David, standing on the lower step, permitted his gaze to swerve from the sweet, eager face of the girl above to that of the man in the corner.
The effect on Braddock was astounding. Signs of a great convulsion revealed themselves in his face. His lips were parted and drawn as if in pain; his eyes were half closed, screening the emotion that groped behind the lids. It was the face, the figure of a man mightily shaken by an unexpected emotion. Slowly his eyes were opened. An expression of utter despair and longing had come into them. Mrs. Braddock was staring at her husband as if she could not believe her senses.
Words came hoarsely, unbidden from the man's lips, spoken as if from the bottom of his soul after years of subjection and restraint, so nearly whispered that they came to David's ears as if from afar off.
"Oh! How lonesome I've been all these years, just for the sound of her voice!"
His wife's hand went out to him involuntarily. He looked at it for a second, then into her eyes, waveringly, uncertain as to the impulse that moved her. He suddenly regained control of himself. He grasped the slender hand in his great, crushing fingers; the sullen, repellent glare leaped back into his eyes; alert and shifty, he held up his free hand to command the silence of David. Then, like a hunted creature at bay, he glanced over his shoulder. Seeing an open door almost at his elbow, he resolutely drew his wife after him into the room beyond. As he turned to slam the door with vicious energy, the tense, incisive voice called out once more from the head of the stairs:
"Father!"
The door banged as if propelled by the added energy of sudden fear.
An instant later, David was dashing up the stairs, three steps at a time. She had started down. He met her at the bend.
"Not just now, dearest," he cried. "Wait! He wants to see your mother first."
She clutched the rail, putting one hand out as if to ward him off. The dread in her eyes went straight to his heart. Her lips were stiff, her voice was low with anxiety.
"Is—is she safe, David,—is he himself? Oh, I must go down there. I know I can reason—"
He stopped her gently. "Please, Christine," he commanded. She suddenly put her hands to his face, and looked into his eyes.
"If anything were to happen to her," she whispered in agony, "I would—"
"She is perfectly safe," he broke in. "Your father will not mistreat her." He clasped her hands and held them to his breast. "My poor darling!"
Her head dropped, her lip quivered. Then she quietly withdrew her hands and sank to a sitting posture on the step, leaning her head wearily against the banister.
Ruby Noakes, a discarded wet towel in her hand, came into the hallway above them. She saw them, hesitated for a moment, and then quietly returned to Christine's bed-chamber.
David dropped to his sweetheart's side. His arm fell about her shoulders. She did not offer to remove it, but sat listless, unresponsive, her eyes lifted to a narrow window beyond which the hot sky gleamed.
He began by whispering words of encouragement and sympathy, his soul in every syllable. She was so quiet, so hurt, so forlorn; never had she been so precious to him as now.
"David," she interrupted, closing her eyes as if through faintness, "it is so good of you to say these things to me, but—but—oh, can't you see how impossible it is now? Don't stay here! Go away, David. Do you think that I can marry you now? It was bad enough before—but now! What am I that you should take me to be your wife! You must go away and forget—"
Her drew her head to his breast, smothering the heartbroken cry by the fierceness of his embrace.
"Open your eyes, Christine! Look at me." She looked up, utter desolation in her eyes. "Nothing on earth can keep you from being my wife—nothing! I couldn't give you up. What am I for, if not to cherish and protect and comfort you? What is the real meaning of the word 'love'? Husband! What does that stand for? A stone wall between pain and peril and trouble; that's what it means. And I'm going to be all of that to you—a stone wall for all your life, Christine. It is settled. The strongest man in the world is not strong enough for the weakest woman. I will never cease being proud of the fact that you are my wife. Don't speak! Lie quiet, dearest. Nothing can change things for you and me."
"It cannot be, David,—it cannot be!" she moaned, covering her face with her hands. He held her there, sobbing, against his breast.
Meanwhile Thomas Braddock was pacing the floor of the library almost directly beneath them. His wife watched him in silence; her eyes followed the tall, bent figure as it swung back and forth with the steadiness of a clock's pendulum. He had not spoken since they entered the room, nor had she moved from the spot where he left her when he released her hand. All this time she had been holding the wrist he had grasped so cruelly. It pained her, but she was only physically conscious of the fact; her mind was not comprehending it.
It was the first time she had seen him in five years. A curious analysis was going on in her perturbed brain. The change in him! She could not take her eyes from the haggard, heavily-lined face, so unlike the blithe, youthful one she had loved, or the bloated, bestial one she had feared and despised. The coarseness, the flabbiness, the purplish hues were no longer there. The bulging, bleary eyes, on which the glaze of continuous dissipation had once settled as if to stay, were not as she remembered them. Instead, they were bright and clear, and lay deep in their sockets. The lips, now beardless, were no longer thick and repulsive. She marveled. This was not the vacillating, whiskey-willed man she had known for so long; here was a determined character, swelling with force, fierce in the resources of a belated integrity of purpose. No longer the careless, handsome youth, nor the honorless man, but a power! Whether that power stood for good or evil, it mattered not; he was a man such as she had never expected him to be.
She was sensitive to one thing in particular, although the realization of it did not come to her at once, she was so taken up with the study of him as a whole: she missed the cigar from the corner of his mouth.
He stopped in front of her.
"This is the first time I have ever been asked into this house," he said, his lips curling in a bitter, unfriendly smile. "Where is your father?"
"His rooms are in the other end of the house, upstairs. He sleeps till noon," she answered mechanically.
"Umph!" he grunted, resuming his walk.
"Tom," she said, taking a firm grasp on her nerves, "let us talk it over quietly. Sit down."
He halted. "I can talk better standing," he said grimly. He came up close to her. She stood her ground, looking him squarely in the eyes. "There isn't much to say, Mary. You know me for what I am, and you know who made me so. He's got to pay, that's all. We won't go into the past. It's not easily forgotten. I guess we remember everything."
"Everything," she said.
"I'm not excusing myself. I'm past that, and besides it wouldn't go down with you. You know where I've been, and you must give me credit for trying to shield Christine a little bit. I took my medicine, and nobody but you and Grand knew that her father was up there until now, excepting Dick. I want to say to you, Mary, I was railroaded for a crime I didn't commit. I was jobbed. He was at the back of it. He was afraid of me—and well he might have been. I did a lot of rotten things while you and I were ploddin' along through those last two years with the show—you know what they were. But it was whiskey! I took money that didn't belong to me—yours and Christine's, and Grand's, and Jenison's. I did worse than that, Mary. I sold you out to Bob Grand—you knew that, too. But I'm going to try to pay up all my debts—all of 'em, in a day or two. I owe you my ugly, worthless life. I'm going to pay you in full by ending it. I owe Colonel Grand for everything I was, for what I am. I'm going to pay him, so help me God. Don't interrupt! My mind's made up. Nothing above hell can change it. I came here to ask you just two questions. I want you to answer them. I'm going to believe you. You never lie, I know that."
"I will answer them, Tom."
He hesitated, his gaze wavering for the first time. "I—I hate to ask you this first one, Mary," he said.
"Go on. Ask it."
"It's a mean question, but I've justgotto hear you say no. Did you go to England with Bob Grand?"
"No."
He breathed deeply. "That's one," he said.
"Here's the other. Did he give you money to live on, to educate Christine with, abroad?"
"No.",
"I'll ask still another. Where did you get the money?"
"Some of it from my father. Afterwards I brought suit against you and Colonel Grand for an accounting. He was compelled to pay into court all that was due me as part owner of Van Slye's. I had my own money in the show. I could not be robbed of that."
"I'm glad you did that. It must have been a nasty dose for him."
"His wife tried to make trouble for me. You heard that?"
"I knew she would, sooner or later."
"You knew it?"
"She wasn't blind."