"When he saw that I couldn't love him he took some money I had left from my earnings and abandoned me. I had a desperate struggle to get along, and then I got my chance in the moving pictures, and I met you there--and--learned what love is--too late--too late!"

Dyckman broke in on her lyric grief, "What became of the man you married?"

"He never came near me till awhile ago. He saw my pictures on the screen and thought I must be making a big lot of money. He came here and tried to sneak back into my good graces. He even tried to kiss me, and I nearly tore his eyes out."

"Why?" Jim asked.

"Because I belong to n.o.body but you--at least, I did belong to n.o.body but you. But now you won't want me any more. I don't blame you for hating me. I hate myself. I've deceived you, and you'll never believe me again, or love me, or anything."

She wept ardently, for she was appalled by the magnitude of her deception, now that it stood exposed. She had no idea of the magnitude of Dyckman's chivalry. She slipped to the floor and laid her head on his knee.

It was Dyckman's nature to respond at once to any appeal to his sympathy or his courtesy. Automatically his heart warmed toward human distress.

He felt a deeper interest in Kedzie than before, because she threw herself on his mercy as never before. His hand went out to her head and fell upon her hair with a kind of apostolic benediction. He poured, as it were, an ointment of absolution and acceptance upon her curls.

She felt in his very fingers so much rea.s.surance that she was encouraged to unburden herself altogether of her h.o.a.rd of secrets.

"There's one more awful thing you'll never forgive me for, Jim. I want to tell you that, and then you'll know all the worst of me. My father and mother came to town to-day, and--and that was my mother who said she was the janitor's wife."

"Why did she do that?" said Jim.

"I had been telling them how much I loved you, and poor dear mother was afraid you might be scared away if you knew how poor my people are."

"What kind of a ghastly sn.o.b do they take me for?" Jim growled.

"They don't know you as I do," said Kedzie; "but even I can't expect you to forgive everything. I've lied to you about everything except about loving you, and I was a long while telling you the truth about that. But now you know all there is to know about me, and I wouldn't blame you for despising me. Of course I don't expect you to want to marry me any longer, so I'll give you back your beautiful engagement ring."

With her arms across his knees, one of her delicate hands began to draw from the other a gold circlet k.n.o.bbed with diamonds.

"Don't do that," Jim said, taking her hands in his. "The engagement stands."

"But how can it, darling?" said Kedzie. "You can't love me any more."

"Of course I do, more and more."

"But you can never marry me, and surely you don't want--"

Suddenly she ran plump into the situation her mother had imagined and encouraged. She blushed at the collision with it, and became a very allegory of innocence confronted with abhorrent evil.

"Of course I don't," said Dyckman, divining exactly what she meant.

"I'll find this Gilfoyle and buy him up or beat him to a pulp."

Kedzie lifted her downcast eyes in grat.i.tude for such a G.o.dlike resolution. But before she could cry out in praise of it she cried out in terror.

For right before her stood the long-lost Gilfoyle.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

During his long wait this evening Gilfoyle had grown almost uncontrollable with impatience to undertake the a.s.sault. 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sailants. 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.