Up to the moment when he heard the report of Druce’s pistol and saw Carter Anson fall, Harry Boland’s whole being had been concentrated in a consuming horror at sight of Patience Welcome in the Cafe Sinister.

The crack of the pistol restored his composure. He saw clearly the infamy of the plot against her,—and against himself. One of the conspirators was already dead on the scene of this last of many crimes. Druce was struggling with the police, taking him for murder of Anson, his partner.

John Boland, the third conspirator, faced his son in a desperate composure.

“Come, Harry, we must get out of here. It will never do to be seen here—”

“For you!” Harry shook off his father’s hand upon his arm. “Go, by all means! I shall take care of myself.” He walked towards the singers’ platform beyond the seething crowd.

John Boland believed of himself afterwards that he would have followed Harry, but at the moment he saw a bowed and gray-haired woman before him, great fear and horror on her face, pressing her way in from scrubbing in the booths beyond. The mop and bucket with which she had been working were in either hand. At sight of his face she dropped her tools of toil and clutched his coat. It was Tom Welcome’s widow.

He uttered a cry like a beast of prey as he shook her off; but he felt himself shiver, conscience making him a coward, and he hurried out, reaching by an exit the alley leading to a side street.

A police lieutenant suddenly barred his way.

“Not so fast there,” said the functionary.

Boland recognized the man as an officer whom he had once placed under obligation to him.

“Good evening, Murphy.”

“Mr. Boland!”

“Yes. I was passing and heard the shot. You understand, of course, that I wish to avoid being seen here. Do you know where I can find a taxi?”

The policeman turned and summoned a taxicab with a gesture. Boland got in at the open door. He leaned forward and spoke with peculiar force, although very low:

“If my son, Harry Boland, happens to pass by here, see that he gets into a taxi whose driver will bring him to my house, to my house, remember, no matter what address he gives.”

“I understand, sir.” Probably the young man’s been misbehaving, was what he thought.

“Pay the driver—in advance—with this, or part of it,” continued Mr. Boland.

“Thank you, sir; thank you. I understand.”

Boland’s car scuttled away into the darkness.

Harry Boland, pushing through the crowd to Patience, saw the futile effort of Mrs. Welcome to take Elsie from the place. He heard Mary Randall’s brief direction and spoke reassuringly to the anguished mother as he pressed a friendly hand on her slight shoulder.

“I will see that Spencer takes you to that boarding-house, where you will be comfortable until you can get away. I will bring Patience. We may get there before you arrive.”

As John Boland foresaw, it was but a few moments after his own departure before Harry Boland reached the street looking for a conveyance. He was assisting Patience Welcome. Rather, she was clinging to him, sobbing like a frightened child. The shooting that had interrupted her pathetic attempt to sing was only part of the tragedy to her.

“I—I saw my little sister in there,” she sobbed. “She called me by name. And such a pathetic cry. Did you hear it?” Patience was sadly unnerved and ill.

“Hush, dear one,” Harry soothed her. “Your mother, Harvey and Miss Randall are there, you know. Whatever can be done, they will do. You are my one and only care, and just now, dearest girl, you’re ill. I’ll take you to the place where your mother is going. Now, please stop crying; try—try—everything will be all right.”

A taxicab appeared, the chauffeur seemingly having anticipated that he was wanted. Harry got in, half carrying Patience, and expecting to be stopped by an officer. But no policeman seemed to see or hear him as he gave the driver the address of the old-fashioned boarding-house selected by Mary Randall.

They rode in silence. Patience sat apart from him, breathing deeply of the fresh air at the window of the car as they rushed swiftly through the city streets. Slowly he felt the tension of the situation released. It was as if the dazed girl were freed from the physical mesh which had been thrown about her.

Then she spoke quite calmly, in her natural voice, but very slowly:

“Harry, I once dreamed that I was in terrible trouble and that you came and helped me. Are you sure I am not dreaming now?”

“Is it a happy dream, if you are, my darling?”

“I—I don’t know,” faltered Patience. “It is wonderful to be here with—you.”

“Do you trust me, Patience? Do you trust me when I tell you that I care more for you than I ever knew I could care for anybody?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I want to make you happy. I want to love you and work for you and have you for my wife, and make a home with you.”

“Harry!” She slipped her hand into his.

“Harry, I still feel afraid. It was such a dreadful thing to see. Was that man killed? It was he who asked me to sing. They had been disappointed about getting a singer, he said, and he gave me ten dollars. All that money for a few songs—it seemed like stealing. But I took it. Mother helped put on this dress they gave me to sing in. You know I went there to help mother clean the place. And to think we saw a murder!”

“My poor darling!” Something in his voice caused her to put her hand up to his face. He felt her finger tips on his eyelids, then down his wet cheeks.

“My poor darling!” She put her arm around his neck—then their trembling lips met.

Harry was the first to speak. “All that you have gone through brings us closer together than anything else in life possibly could, Patience. I am so proud of you and so down on myself that I ever let you out of my sight—”

“You must not be down on my—”

“Say it, dear! I want to hear my sweetheart say the word.”

“I was going to say ‘my dearest,’ but I’ll say,—if you want me to,—my—my husband.”

“You dear, sweet wife!” responded Harry.

After a few moments Harry observed that they were being taken farther than he had directed the man to go. The boarding-house was rather close to town. He found that they were well on the north side, nearing the quarter of his father’s house. He called to stop the driver, but the man remained deaf to his efforts, except to increase the speed, and presently drew up at the Boland mansion.

“How dare you bring me here?” Harry demanded, stepping out of the car to remonstrate.

“Orders.”

“Orders! I ordered you where I wanted you to go. Here, if you need two fares for one job, you swindler! Hold on—”

“Driver! Come here.”

Harry heard his father’s stern voice from the opened doorway. “Driver! Take that girl wherever she wants to go. Harry, come in here! It’s time for a show-down.”

“It certainly is time for a show-down!” Harry assisted Patience from the car. “You may wait and earn the fare I just paid you or go to jail,” he said to the driver, and boldly led Patience into his father’s house.

The elder Boland turned into a den at the right of the front hallway and closed the door. He looked at Patience with an appraising glance, then kindly at his son.

“I suppose you must be humored in this affair,” he said in an indulgent manner, “while you haven’t sense to see that the present is scarcely the time to devote yourself to any such young woman. What do you say to a trip to California? I’ll foot all the bills, and later I will settle what you ask for on you.” He spoke to Patience.

“Thank you.” She spoke without a tremor. “You may do something substantial for my mother, because you—took—my poor father’s invention. Do you know, sir, that my poor father never recovered from that loss?”

“Hell’s fire!” yelled John Boland, “I—”

“You see, sir,” interrupted Harry deliberately, “it really is time for a show-down. I wouldn’t go away from Chicago at present, even for the wedding journey which we will pretend you were honestly offering us. I am going to stay and fight it out. You will have to stay and fight it out, too.”

“Me?” blustered Boland. “What have I got to fight out?”

“You know very well why you were at Druce’s cafe tonight. You were in a plot against me, leagued with that fellow, Druce, and his tribe, too, against the crusade started by Mary Randall to protect girls. You prefer to make money exploiting them. Not directly, perhaps, but conspicuously indirect.”

“So you are turning traitor in—politics?” sneered his father. “Taking sides with a crazy fanatic, whose presence at the cafe caused the death of a good citizen of Chicago. Druce did not mean to shoot Anson.”

“I see your line of defense. It’s you who have turned traitor—to all that is right in you as a man. See, here is the anonymous letter which summoned me to the cafe tonight. I wish you could tell me that you do not know who wrote that note.”

Boland read the letter scornfully. “How should I know who writes you letters? Young men who make alliances with women who frequent such places must expect such messages,” he sneered.

“Stop!” Harry’s eyes blazed with anger. “We have borne all that we shall of that sort from you. One more such syllable and I shall not be able to speak to you as to my father—even in outward respect.”

“You seem already to have forgotten that completely.”

Harry let the sneer pass. “It is up to you, sir, to decide now—this moment—whether or not I ever look upon you as my father again. I have myself decided that I shall no longer be a party to your crimes.”

“Crimes! My God, this is too much!”

“You are too shrewd a man to have a fool for a son. I see plainly that you were leagued with Druce and Anson to blacken the woman I love. But right is might and love is right. The whole dastardly affair enlightens me as to the nature of your alliance with that dive. Why did you renew the lease to Druce against my protest? I never realized until tonight the horror of your extensive holdings of tenderloin property. I don’t want another cent from such sources.”

“Very well.” The elder Boland shook with anger. “Get out of this house, you and your—fitting mate. Never let me see your face again. Tomorrow I will undertake a campaign which will brand you among your friends as a son who turned traitor to his father in his hour of stress. All my power, all my money, will be against you. I will crush you as I have every man who has dared oppose me. Get out of my house!”

Harry gazed at his father in a tumult of pity and wrath, but he did not speak.

Patience, her eyes filled with tears, her hands nervously clutching her ’kerchief, walked up to the angry man.

“I am sorry for you,” she said, “just as I always used to be sorry for my poor father when he was drunk as you are now with your own anger. You know that I am a fitting mate for your son. I don’t understand your enmity unless it’s because we’re not rich like you.”

Harry caught Patience in his arms. “Remember, it makes no difference to me what my father says. I’m a man and able to choose my own wife.” He looked at his father. “We are going now,” he said firmly.

There was no reply.

The door closed behind his son. John Boland staggered to a couch and falling down beside it buried his face in his arms.