“I understand.” Hawkins this time caught the almost inaudible reply. “All right!” Crang said. “There's a padre I know, who's down on Staten Island now. We'll go down there and be married without any fuss. I'll be here at eight o'clock. Your father isn't fit to ride in that rattle-trap old bus of yours. I'll have a comfortable limousine for him, and you can go with him. Hawkins can drive me, and”--he was laughing softly--“and be my best man. I'll see that he knows about it in time to----” Like a blind man, Hawkins was groping his way toward the front door. Married! They were to be married to-morrow morning! He found himself on the street. He hurried. Impulse drove him along. He did not reason. His mind was a tortured thing. And yet he laughed as he scurried around the corner, laughed in an unhinged way, and raised both hands above his head and pounded at the air with his doubled fists. They were to be married to-morrow morning, and he--he was to be _best man_. And as he laughed, his once ruddy, weather-beaten face was white as a winding-sheet, and in the whiteness there was stamped a look that it was good on no man's face to see. And then suddenly two great tears rolled down his cheeks, opening the flood gates of his soul. “My little girl!” he sobbed. “Daddy's little girl!” And reason and a strange calmness came. “John Bruce,” he said. “He loves her too.” And in front of Mrs. Hedges' rooming-house he climbed into the driver's seat of the old traveling pawn-shop. It didn't matter now how much noise he made. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE--THE LAST CHANCE |JOHN BRUCE closed the door of Larmon's suite, and, taking the elevator, went up to his own room in the Bayne-Miloy Hotel, two floors above. Here, he flung himself almost wearily into a chair. Larmon had gone to bed; but bed offered no appeal to him, John Bruce, in spite of the fact that he was conscious of great mental fatigue. Bed without sleep was a horror, and his spirits were too depressed to make sleep even a possibility. From a purely selfish standpoint, and he admitted to utter selfishness now, it had been a hollow victory. Crang was gone, disposed of, and as far as Larmon was concerned the man no longer existed, for if Crang had held certain intimate knowledge of Larmon's life over Larmon's head, Larmon was now in exactly the same position in respect to Crang. And Crang, too, for the time being at least, was no longer a factor in Claire's life. He smiled grimly to himself. Hollow! The victory had been sweeping, complete, conclusive--for every one but himself! He had not even waited to leave the dock before he had telephoned Claire. And Claire had---- He rose suddenly and began to walk feverishly up and down the room. Hollow! He laughed out shortly. She had curtly refused to talk to him.