"Oh, the son of John Boland, eh?" jeered the drunken man. "Son of John Boland, 'lectric light king. John Boland's son, eh?"

"Yes," replied Harry sharply, "what of it?"

"Nothing I can prove," retorted Welcome, grimly, "only--give my regards to your father. Just tell him Tom Welcome sends his regards. He'll know."

He began to whimper softly. "Poor old Tom Welcome, who might have been riding in his carriage this day." He stopped whining abruptly and snarled at the young man: "If there was any justice on G.o.d's earth--"

Welcome lurched forward. Harry grasped his wrist and peered into his bloated face.

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.

Grogan interrupted a good deal agitated. "He doesn't mean anything," he said, "he's just drunk. Come, boy, let's get out of here."

"I want to know--" persisted Harry, but he dropped Welcome's arm.

"Don't be a fool," commanded Grogan, "can't you see the man's drunk? Come on."

"But I tell you I want to know--"

"Oh, you don't know anything!"

Harry was about to retort angrily when Grogan seized his wrist with an iron grip and swung him around the corner. Half dragging the young man along with him he got him to the hotel. There Grogan succeeded in convincing him of the folly of engaging in a street argument with a dipsomaniac he did not know.

Meanwhile Harvey and Welcome continued their slow and stumbling journey to the Welcome cottage. Welcome, after his interview with Harry Boland was in a savage mood. A debauch of two days had left him virtually a mad man. It required all of Harvey's diplomacy to get him into his house quietly.

The lights were burning in the living room when they arrived. Harvey convoyed his swaying companion to the back of the house, opened the door quietly and pushed him in. Mrs. Welcome and the two girls were in the living room, but the wind was sighing without and they heard nothing. A storm had come up with the setting of the sun and occasional flashes of lightning lighted the darkened room where Welcome found himself while the thunder deadened the sound of his stumbling feet. He made his way through the kitchen to a bedroom and sank down exhausted on a bed.

But Tom Welcome could not sleep. Every nerve in his body jangled. The interview with young Boland, for reasons which will be apparent to the reader later, had aroused in him a smouldering anger. He tossed restlessly on his couch.

While he lay there he heard some one knocking at the front door. All of his perceptions had grown abnormally keen. He heard a boy's voice and recognized it as that of a neighbor's son.

"It's me, Jimmie," said the boy. "Pa sent me over with Elsie's veil. She dropped it while she was out in the auto this afternoon."

He heard the door close and then the accusing voice of his wife demanding:

"Elsie, who have you been out with, automobiling?"

"I was out this afternoon with Martin Druce," replied the girl defiantly.

"Then," went on the mother, conscious that a crisis of some sort between her and her daughter was approaching, "you were talking to him this evening and not to Harvey Spencer? You told me a falsehood?"

"What if I did?" Elsie's tone was low and stubborn.

Mrs. Welcome began to sob.

"Mother, mother," pleaded Patience, "Elsie didn't mean--"

"I did mean it," flared back Elsie. "I did mean it! Why shouldn't I go autoing when I have the chance? Isn't life in Millville hard enough without--" She paused overcome by a wave of pa.s.sion. "I'm tired of Millville," she exclaimed, "I'm tired of the factory. I'm tired of living here as we do in this miserable, tumble-down place we call home. I'm tired of working like a slave, while a drunken father--"

The words had scarcely left the girl's lips when Tom Welcome, red-eyed, dishevelled, swaying, appeared in the doorway behind her. His face was lit with demoniac pa.s.sion. He rushed at the girl and she screamed in terror. With a vicious lunge he struck her down and then, seizing her by the hair, dragged her into the bedroom where, amid her cries, he rained blow after blow upon her.

Harvey Spencer, just pa.s.sing through the gate, heard the first scream. He rushed back into the house as Welcome, finished for the moment with Elsie, had returned to the cottage living room and was approaching his wife menacingly. He seized the raging man by the collar and hurled him into a corner.

"Stay there," he said, "or I'll brain you."

Welcome stood for a moment glaring at the intruder. He attempted to speak, but foam flecked his lips and seemed to choke his voice. His eyes acquired a fixed and unearthly stare. He raised his fist as though to strike and then plunged headlong to the floor.

Patience was the first to reach her father's side. A vivid flash of lightning followed by a terrific detonation of thunder rocked the cottage.

"He's dying," screamed Patience.

Mrs. Welcome, forgetting past injuries, sprang to her husband's side.

"Tom," she wailed, "speak to me. Tom--Tom, I'm your wife--"

The dying man tried to sit up. His mania had pa.s.sed. He patted his wife's shoulder feebly and smiled. A great weakness had come into his face.

"Forgive me," he said, "I didn't know--I didn't know what I was doing. It was the drink. I am going. Call Elsie!"

Patience sprang toward the bedroom, but it was empty. The open doors through the kitchen showed how she had fled. As she searched frantically for her sister, the little clock on the mantel slowly struck the hour of eight.

"She's gone," cried Patience. A premonition of the tragedy of Elsie's flight flashed upon her mind. "Oh," she cried, "my little lost sister! My little lost sister!"

"Gone," cried Harvey. "Gone where?" He opened the door. The rain was falling pitilessly. "Not out into this storm. Someone must find her." He rushed out into the darkness.

"Gone!" echoed Tom Welcome. His voice was hollow as a knell. The drink-racked body stiffened in a spasm and then dropped limply into his weeping wife's arms. "Gone!" he gasped.

Tom Welcome was dead.

Another flash of lightning and a roar of thunder. The two women strove to revive the corpse. At last the dreadful realization came to them that Tom Welcome would never speak again. The wind smote the cottage and the light in the single lamp in the room fluttered as though in mortal terror. The skies were shattered with a final climactic crash of thunder. The mother and daughter, alone in that chamber of death, clung to each other silently feeling themselves isolated from all mankind, with even the elements storming against them.

While they waited, blanched and terror-stricken, for the last reverberations of the thunder, the whistle of the Fast Express, bound from Millville to the great city, rose wildly on the air, like the scream of an exultant demon, and died away in a series of weird and mocking echoes into the night.

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH SOME OF CHICAGO'S BEST PEOPLE ESSAY A TASK TOO BIG FOR THEM

Lucas Randall inserted his key into the door and let himself into his Michigan boulevard residence. The butler, busy in one of the reception rooms, looked up merely to nod a welcome as he entered. Mr. Randall turned to the mirror in the hallway. He saw the reflection of a man sixty years of age, gray but well preserved, intelligent but not forceful.

As he turned from the gla.s.s he saw his wife descending the broad stairs.

She was small and fragile. In her youth she had had a delicate pink and gold beauty. The years had worn away the pink and the gold but had left a spirituality that seemed even finer.

"I'm glad you're home early, Luke dear," he heard her saying. Then noticing his air of abstraction she added: "Did you forget after all, Luke?"

"Forget," he repeated blankly, "forget what, Lucy?"