The Rose in the Ring Part 53

David cut him short with an exclamation. Then he walked out to the curb, opened the cab door and coolly motioned for Colonel Grand to step down and enter.

Mary Braddock waited no longer. She sped down the steps, pa.s.sing the slow-moving, stupefied Colonel, and ruthlessly shoved Roberta Grand to one side, taking her stand in front of her husband, facing his foe.

"It isn't necessary for my husband to s.h.i.+eld himself behind your flesh and blood, Colonel Grand," she said, her head erect. "Now, if you care to shoot, you have both of us at your mercy."

"I came to propose a peaceful--" began the Colonel, baffled.

"Step lively, Colonel Grand!" commanded Jenison. "Permit me, Miss Grand."

"Don't touch me," hissed Roberta, disdaining his a.s.sistance. The look she bestowed upon her father, as she pa.s.sed him, was not a pleasant one. He had promised her a different reception at the Portman home, secretly depending on his power to force Mrs. Braddock to welcome an armistice, no matter how distasteful it may have been to her. He had not antic.i.p.ated the outcome. Miss Grand accompanied him, meanly it is true, in the hope that she might gloat over the Braddocks in their humiliation.

She entered the cab, frightened and dismayed. Her father, still grasping his pistol, followed her. He cast a defeated, almost appealing glance at the uncompromising face of the young man who held open the door.

"You can't obtain a warrant for me," he said nervously. "I have the law on my side. I can prove that this man threatened--"

"Drive on, cabby," said David relentlessly. "I've taken your number.

You will be called on as a witness. Don't argue! I mean it!"

Muttering excitedly, the driver, without the customary "where to?"

started off down the street. Colonel Grand leaned forward to send a menacing scowl toward the group on the sidewalk. He smiled sardonically when he saw that Mary Braddock still kept her place in front of her husband, evidently afraid that he would fire from the window of the departing cab. Then he called out his instructions to the driver and settled back in the seat.

The gritting of Tom Braddock's teeth did not escape the tortured ears of his wife. She looked up quickly. He was glaring after the cab, a look of appalling ferocity in his face.

"Come into the house, Tom," she said quickly.

He turned on her with a snarl.

"I won't keep you long," he grated. "I've got other business on hand."

It occurred to him to tender David his meed of praise. "That was pretty sharp in you, David, staving him off like that. I owe you something for doing that."

"I knew you were unarmed. You would have had no chance."

They were going up the steps, Braddock between the others. Brooks, the footman, was holding the door open. He had been a politely interested witness to the startling encounter.

Braddock seemed to be studying each successive slab of stone as he ascended. The muscles of his jaw were working. He seemed to have formed a habit of jamming his hands far down into his coat pockets.

"That was the only chance _he'll_ ever have," was his sententious remark. No other word was uttered until they were inside the house, Mrs. Braddock's gasp of relief could not have been called a sigh.

"Thank G.o.d!" she breathed, sinking upon the hall seat and clasping her clenched hands to her breast.

Braddock shot a quick glance up the broad stairway. The surroundings were strange to him,--he had never been inside the home of his father-in-law before,--but he knew that Christine was somewhere overhead.

"How's Christine, Mary?" he asked roughly.

"She is wretchedly unhappy, Tom."

"Umph!" was the way he received it, but a close observer might have seen the flutter of his eyelids and the sharp, convulsive movement in the coat pockets. "I don't want her to see me," he said.

"She wants to see you--"

He faced her angrily. "No! I've got to take care of my nerves. I can't take any chances on having 'em upset. See here, David," he said, lowering his voice and speaking with deadly emphasis, "that talk of yours about swearing out a warrant for Grand don't go, do you understand? I don't want him to be arrested. I don't want him locked up. I want him to be _free_. He'd be too safe behind the bars?"

The sound of a door opening above came to them at this juncture, followed by the swift rush of feet and the rustle of skirts. Braddock looked up and instinctively drew back into an obscured recess at his left.

Christine's face appeared over the railing above. She leaned far forward and called out in the high, tense tones of extreme nervousness:

"Father! Is it you? Are you there?"

There was no response.

David, standing on the lower step, permitted his gaze to swerve from the sweet, eager face of the girl above to that of the man in the corner.

The effect on Braddock was astounding. Signs of a great convulsion revealed themselves in his face. His lips were parted and drawn as if in pain; his eyes were half closed, screening the emotion that groped behind the lids. It was the face, the figure of a man mightily shaken by an unexpected emotion. Slowly his eyes were opened. An expression of utter despair and longing had come into them. Mrs. Braddock was staring at her husband as if she could not believe her senses.

Words came hoa.r.s.ely, unbidden from the man's lips, spoken as if from the bottom of his soul after years of subjection and restraint, so nearly whispered that they came to David's ears as if from afar off.

"Oh! How lonesome I've been all these years, just for the sound of her voice!"

His wife's hand went out to him involuntarily. He looked at it for a second, then into her eyes, waveringly, uncertain as to the impulse that moved her. He suddenly regained control of himself. He grasped the slender hand in his great, crus.h.i.+ng fingers; the sullen, repellent glare leaped back into his eyes; alert and s.h.i.+fty, he held up his free hand to command the silence of David. Then, like a hunted creature at bay, he glanced over his shoulder. Seeing an open door almost at his elbow, he resolutely drew his wife after him into the room beyond. As he turned to slam the door with vicious energy, the tense, incisive voice called out once more from the head of the stairs:

"Father!"

The door banged as if propelled by the added energy of sudden fear.

An instant later, David was das.h.i.+ng up the stairs, three steps at a time. She had started down. He met her at the bend.

"Not just now, dearest," he cried. "Wait! He wants to see your mother first."

She clutched the rail, putting one hand out as if to ward him off. The dread in her eyes went straight to his heart. Her lips were stiff, her voice was low with anxiety.

"Is--is she safe, David,--is he himself? Oh, I must go down there. I know I can reason--"

He stopped her gently. "Please, Christine," he commanded. She suddenly put her hands to his face, and looked into his eyes.

"If anything were to happen to her," she whispered in agony, "I would--"

"She is perfectly safe," he broke in. "Your father will not mistreat her." He clasped her hands and held them to his breast. "My poor darling!"

Her head dropped, her lip quivered. Then she quietly withdrew her hands and sank to a sitting posture on the step, leaning her head wearily against the banister.

Ruby Noakes, a discarded wet towel in her hand, came into the hallway above them. She saw them, hesitated for a moment, and then quietly returned to Christine's bed-chamber.

David dropped to his sweetheart's side. His arm fell about her shoulders. She did not offer to remove it, but sat listless, unresponsive, her eyes lifted to a narrow window beyond which the hot sky gleamed.

He began by whispering words of encouragement and sympathy, his soul in every syllable. She was so quiet, so hurt, so forlorn; never had she been so precious to him as now.

"David," she interrupted, closing her eyes as if through faintness, "it is so good of you to say these things to me, but--but--oh, can't you see how impossible it is now? Don't stay here! Go away, David. Do you think that I can marry you now? It was bad enough before--but now! What am I that you should take me to be your wife! You must go away and forget--"

Her drew her head to his breast, smothering the heartbroken cry by the fierceness of his embrace.