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 h.e.l.l 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 la.s.sie 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.ds 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 rehea.r.s.ed. 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 a.s.sailants, 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

The villain in melodrama is as likely as not to be as decent a fellow as any. When he slinks from the stage in his final hissed exit he goes to his dressing-room, scours off his grease-paint, and probably returns to his devoted family or seats himself before a bowl of milk-and-crackers in his club.

Gilfoyle was as decent a fellow as ever villain was. Circ.u.mstances and not himself cast him in an evil role, and as actors know, once so established, it is almost impossible to return to heroic parts. Gilfoyle could not even remove his grease-paint. He could not go back to his dressing-room, for his landlady had told him that the only key to her front door was cash. He had gone out to bring home a millionaire, and he had achieved nothing but a headache and a moral cataclysm.

He hardly knew how he escaped from the apartment-house. The dark cool of the street brought him into the night of things. It came upon him like a black fog what he had tried to do. The bitter disgrace of a man who has been whipped in a fight was his, but other disgraces were heaped upon it. For the first time he saw himself as Kedzie saw him.

He had neglected his wife till she grew famous in spite of him. He had gone back to her to share her bounty. When she repulsed him he had entered into a conspiracy to spy on her. He had waited impatiently for a rich man to compromise her, so that he could surprise them in guilt and extort money from them.

He had not warned the girl of her danger from the other man or from himself. He had not pleaded with her to be good, had not asked her to come back to honeymoon again in poverty with him; he had preferred to live on borrowed money and on unpaid board while he fooled with verses and refused the manual tasks that waited everywhere about the busy city.

He might have cleaned the streets or earned a decent living handling garbage in the city scows. But he had preferred to speculate in blackmail and play the badger-game with his wife as an unwitting accomplice. He had hated millionaires, and counted them all criminals deserving spoliation, but he felt that he had sunk lower than the millionaires.

The remembrance of Kedzie haunted him. She had been supremely beautiful to-night, frightened into greater beauty than ever. She was afraid of him who should have been her refuge, and she hid for protection behind the man who should have seemed her enemy.

He recalled her as she was when he first loved her, the pretty little candy-store clerk, the lissome, living marble in her Greek tunic, the quaint, sweet girl who came to him in the Grand Central Terminal, lugging her suit-case, the shy thing at the License Bureau, the ineffably exquisite bride he had made his wife. He saw her at the gas-stove and loved her very petulance and the pretty way she banged the oven door and pouted at fate.