During his long wait this evening Gilfoyle had grown almost
uncontrollable with impatience to undertake the assault. His landlady
had warned him not to return to his room until he brought some cash
on account. He was for making the charge the moment he saw Jim Dyckman
enter the building, but Connery insisted on giving Dyckman time to
get forward with his courtship. They had seen the maid come out of the
servants' entrance and hurry up the street to the vain tryst Connery had
arranged with her to get her out of the way.
At length, when time had passed sufficiently, they had crossed to the
apartment-house and told the elevator-boy they were expected by the
tenants above. He took them up without question. They pretended to ring
the bell there, waited for the elevator to disappear, then walked down a
flight of steps and paused at the fatal sill.
Connery inserted the key stealthily into the lock, turned it, opened the
door in silence, and let Gilfoyle slip through. He followed and closed
the door without shock.
They heard Kedzie's murmurous tones and the rumble of Dyckman's answer.
Then Gilfoyle strode forward. He saw Kedzie coiled on the floor with
her elbows on Dyckman's knees. He caught her eye, and her start of
bewilderment held him spellbound a moment. Then he cried:
“There you are! I've got you! You faithless little beast.”
Dyckman rose to an amazing height, lifted Kedzie to her feet, and
answered:
“Who the devil are you, and what the devil do you want?”
“I'm the husband of that shameless woman; that's who I am,” Gilfoyle
shrilled, a little cowed by Dyckman's stature.
“Oh, you are, are you!” said Dyckman. “Well, you're the very chap I'm
looking for. Come in, by all means.”
Connery, seeing that the initiative was slipping from Gilfoyle's flaccid
hand, pushed forward with truculence.
“None of that, you big bluff! You needn't think you can put anything
over on me.”
“And who are you?” said Dyckman.
“I'm Connery the detective, and I've got the goods on you.”
He advanced on Dyckman, and Gilfoyle came with him. Gilfoyle took
courage from the puzzled confusion of Dyckman, and he poured forth
invectives.
“You think because you're rich you can go around breaking up homes and
decoying wives away, do you? Not that she isn't willing enough to be
decoyed! I wasn't good enough for her. She had to sell herself for money
and jewelry and a gay time! I ought to kill you both, and maybe I will;
but first I'm going to show you up in the newspapers.”
“Oh, you are, are you!” was the best that Dyckman could improvise.
“Yes, he is,” Connery roared. “I'm a newspaper man, and your name's
worth head-lines in every paper in the country. And I'll see that it
gets there, too. It will go on the wires to-night unless--”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you come across with--”
“Oh, that's it, is it!” said Dyckman. “Just a little old-fashioned
blackmail!”
He had tasted the joys of violence in his bout with Cheever, and now
he had recourse to it again. His long arms went out swiftly toward the
twain of his assailants. His big hands cupped their heads as if they
were melons, and he knocked their skulls together smartly.
He might have battered them to death, but he heard Kedzie's little cry
of horror, and forbore. He flung the heads from him, and the bodies
followed limply. Connery went to the floor, and Gilfoyle sprawled across
a chair. They were almost unconscious, their brains reduced to swirling
nebulae.
Kedzie thought for a moment that she and her love-affairs had brought
about a double murder. She saw herself becoming one of those little
women who appear with an almost periodic regularity in the annals of
crime, and whose red smiles drag now this, now that great family's name
into the mud and vomit of public nausea.
She would lose Jim Dyckman, after all, and ruin him in the losing. She
clung to his arm to check him in his work of devastation. He, too, stood
wondering at the amazing deed of his rebellious hands, and wondering
what the result would be.
He and Kedzie rejoiced at seeing the victims move. Connery began to
squirm on the floor and get to his wabbly knees, and Gilfoyle writhed
back to consciousness with wits a-flutter.
There was a silence of mutual attention for a while. Connery was
growling from all-fours like a surly dog:
“I'll get you for this--you'll see! You'll be sorry for this.”
This restored Dyckman's temper to its throne. He seized Connery by the
scruff of his coat, jerked him to his feet, and snarled at him:
“Haven't you had enough, you little mucker? You threaten me or Miss
Adair again and I'll not leave enough of you to--to--”
He was not apt at phrases, but Connery felt metaphors enough in the size
of the fist before his nose. He put up his hands, palms forward, in the
ancient gesture of surrender. Then Gilfoyle turned cry-baby and began to
sob.
“You call her Miss Adair! But she's my wife. Mrs. Gilfoyle is what she
is, and you've taken her away from me. This is a rotten country, and you
rotten millionaires can do nearly anything you want to--but not quite.
You'll find that out. There are still a few courts and a few newspapers
you can't muzzle.”
Dyckman advanced against him, but Gilfoyle merely clung to the back
of his chair, and his non-resistance was his best shelter. It was
impossible for Dyckman to strike him. Secure in his helplessness, he
took full advantage of the tyranny of impotence. He rose to his feet and
went on with his lachrymose philippic.
“You're going to pay for what you've done, and pay high!”
The one thing that restrained Dyckman from offering to buy him out
was that he demanded purchase. Like most rich people, Dyckman was the
everlasting target of prayers and threats. He could be generous to an
appeal, but a demand locked his heart.
He answered Gilfoyle's menace, bluntly, “I'll pay you when hell freezes
over, and not a cent before.”
“Well, then, you stand from under,” Gilfoyle squealed. “There's a law
in this State against home-wreckers like you, and I can send you to the
penitentiary for breaking it.”
Dyckman's rage blackened again; he caught Gilfoyle by the shoulder and
roared: “You foul-mouthed, filthy-minded little sneak! You say a word
against your wife and I'll throw you out of the window. She's too decent
for you to understand. You get down on your knees and ask her pardon.”
He forced Gilfoyle to his knees, but he could not make him pray. And
Kedzie fell back from him. She was afraid to pose as a saint worthy of
genuflection. Connery re-entered the conflict with a sneer:
“Aw, tell it to the judge, Dyckman! Tell it to the judge! See how good
it listens to him. We'll tell him how we found you here; and you tell
him you were holding a prayer-meeting. You didn't want to be disturbed,
so you didn't have even a servant around--all alone together at this
hour.”
Then a new, strange voice spoke in.
“Who said they were alone?”
The four turned to see Mrs. Thropp filling the hall doorway, and Adna's
head back of her shoulder. It was really a little too melodramatic. The
village lassie goes to the great city; her father and mother arrive in
all their bucolic innocence just in time to save her from destruction.
Connery, whose climax she had spoiled, though she had probably saved his
bones, gasped, “Who the hell are you?”
“I'm this child's mother; that's who I am. And that's her father. And
what's more, we've been here all evening, and you'd better look out how
you swear at me or I'll sick Mr. Dyckman on you.”
If there are gallery gods in heaven, and angels with a melodramatic
taste (as there must be, for how else could we have acquired it?), they
must have shaken the cloudy rafters with applause. Only one touch was
needed to perfect the scene, and that was for the _First_ and _Second_
Villains to slink off, cursing and muttering, “Foiled again!”
But these villains were not professionals, and they had not been
rehearsed. They were like childish actors in a juvenile production at
five pins per admission. An unexpected line threw them into complete
disorder.
Connery turned to Gilfoyle. “Did you ever lamp this old lady before?”
Gilfoyle answered, stoutly enough, “I never laid eyes on her.”
Connery was about to order Mrs. Thropp out of the room as an impostor,
but she would not be denied her retort.
“O' course he never laid eyes on me. If he had have he'd never tried to
pull the wool over that innocent baby's eyes; and if I'd ever laid eyes
on him I'd have run him out of the country before I'd ever have let my
child look at him a second time.”
Connery made one last struggle: “What proof have you got that you're her
mother?”
“Ask my husband here.”
“What good is his word in such a matter?”
Connery did not mean this as in any sense a reflection on Mrs. Thropp's
marital integrity, but she took it so. Now, in Nimrim the question of
fidelity is not dealt with lightly, at least in repartee. Mrs. Thropp
emitted a roar of scandalized virtue and would have attacked the young
men with her fists if her husband, who should have attacked them in her
stead, had not clung to her, murmuring:
“Now, momma, don't get excited. You young fellers better vamoose quick.
I can't holt her very long.”
So they vamosed and were much obliged for the opportunity, leaving
Kedzie to fling her arms about her mother with spontaneous filial
affection, and to present Dyckman to her with genuine pride.
Dyckman had been almost as frightened as Kedzie, He had been more afraid
of his own temper than of his assailants, but afraid enough of their
shadowy powers. Mrs. Thropp would have had to be far less comely
than she was to be unwelcome. She had the ultimate charm of perfect
timeliness. He greeted her with that deference he paid to all women, and
she adored him at once, independently of his fortune.
Adna said that he had always been an admirer of the old Dyckman and was
glad to meet his boy, being as he was a railroad man himself, in a
small way. He rather gave the impression that he was at least a third
vice-president, but very modest about it.
Mrs. Thropp gleaned from the first words that Kedzie had gone contrary
to her advice and had told Dyckman the truth. She took the credit
calmly.
“I come on East to clear things up, and I advised my daughter to tell
you just the way things were--as I always say to my children, use the
truth and shame the devil.”
Kedzie was too busy to notice the outrage. She was thanking Heaven for
her impulse to reveal the facts, realizing how appalling it would have
been if Gilfoyle had been the first to inform Dyckman.
They were all having a joyous family party when it suddenly came over
them that Gilfoyle had once more appeared and resubmerged. But Dyckman
said: “I'll find him for you, and I'll buy him. He'll be cheap at any
price.”
He bade good night early and went to his own home, carrying a backload
of trouble. He was plainly in for it. Whatever happened, he was the
scapegoat-elect.