|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.”