“My poor friend!” he said again.
John Bruce's hand on the arm of his chair clenched suddenly.
“You may perhaps feel that he should not have told me of his relationship to Claire; but it was this damnable situation with Crang that forced the issue.”
Paul Veniza left Hawkins' side and began to pace the room in an agitated way.
“No!” he said heavily. “I do not blame Hawkins. We—we neither of us know what to do. It is a terrible, an awful thing. Crang is like some loathsome creature to her, and yet in some way that I cannot discover he has got her into his power. I have tried everything, used every argument I can with her, pleaded with her—and it has been useless.” He raised his arms suddenly above his head, partly it seemed in supplication, partly in menace. “Oh, God!” he cried out. “I, too, love her, for she has really been my daughter through all these years. But I do not quite understand.” He turned to Hawkins. “Even if you kept your promise now, my friend, what connection has that with Doctor Crang? Could that in any way prevent this marriage?”
It was John Bruce who answered.
“It is the last ditch,” he said evenly; “the one way you have not tried—to tell her her own and her father's story. I do not say it will succeed. But it is the great crisis in her life. It is the one thing in the world that ought to sway her, win her. Her father! After twenty years—her father!”
Paul Veniza's hands, trembling, ruffled through his white hair. Hawkins' fingers fumbled, now with the buttons on his vest, now with the brim of his hat which He had picked up aimlessly from the table; and his eyes, lifting from the floor, glanced timorously, almost furtively, at Paul Veniza, and sought the floor again.
John Bruce got up from his chair and stepped toward them.
“I want to tell you something,” he said sharply, “that ought to put an end to any hesitation on your parts at any plan, no matter what, that offers even the slightest chance of stopping this marriage. Listen! Devil though you both believe this Crang to be, you do not either of you even know the man for what he is. While I was lying there”—he flung out his hand impulsively toward the couch—“the safe here in this room was opened and robbed one night. You know that. But you do not know that it was done by Doctor Crang and his confederates. You know what happened. But you do not know that while the 'burglars' pretended to hold Crang at bay with a revolver and then made their 'escape,' Crang, with most of the proceeds of that robbery in his own pockets, was laughing up his sleeve at you.”