"Lucky beggar!" growled her husband.
"Yes, they're both lucky."
That both Mr. and Mrs. Rawn were lucky seemed to be the consensus of opinion of the procession of those passing at this moment along the great driveway, and hence looking upon the rear stage of the drama then in progress. But they saw no drama. The evening was beautiful. The spot was one of great beauty. Apparently all was peace and content. There was no drama visible, only a stage set for a scene of happiness. Yet, two hundred yards from the point of this belief, on the stage of the dimly-lighted gallery facing the lake, the comedy of life and ambition, of success and sorrow, moved on briskly; moved, indeed, to its appointed and inevitable end.
II
Rawn's voice, harsh, half animal in its savagery, wakened some sudden kindred savagery in young Halsey's soul. In a flash the spark rose between steel and flint. The accumulated resentment of many days made tinder enough for Halsey now.
"All right, Mr. Rawn," said he, his head dropping, his chin extended. "Go on with the killing now, if you like. I'm going to tell you right here, that sort of talk will do you no good. If you kill me you kill my secret. It isn't yours, and neither you nor any other man is apt to set it going again."
"You hound, you cur!" half sobbed Rawn. His daughter stood, tense, silent, unnoticed at his elbow.
"Thank you! Now, I'll tell you. I dismantled every motor, and I'm never going to build them again for you. I meant every word of what I said. Also I mean this!"
As he spoke he rose and struck Rawn full in the face with his half-clenched hand. The sound of the blow could have been heard the whole length of the gallery—was so heard. An instant later, half roaring, John Rawn closed with the younger man....
The women, plucking at their arms, could do nothing to separate the two, indeed were not noticed in the struggle. As to that, the whole matter was over in an instant. Halsey was far the stronger of the two. He caught the right wrist of Rawn as he smote down clumsily, caught his other wrist in the next instant, and then slowly, by sheer strength, forced him back and down until at last he crowded him into the chair which Grace a moment earlier had vacated. The bony fingers of his hand worked havoc on John Rawn's wrist, on his twisted arm. Halsey was not so long from his college athletics, where he had been welcome on several teams. He was younger than Rawn, his body was harder from hard work and abstemiousness. He was the older man's master.