"Please don't, Tom," cried Ruby.
"You would better a thousand times shoot yourself than to bring that black shadow into her life," said David. "Suicide is bad enough but—ugh!" He shuddered.
"Look here, Jenison, I might have been a good man if it hadn't been for Bob Grand. I always would have been a showman, I reckon, but I'd have been fairly self-respecting. Today, instead of being what I am, I'd still have the love of my wife, the respect of my girl, and—oh, well, you can't understand. You all are against me—and have been for years. I don't blame you—not a bit of it. I deserve it. Grand deliberately set out to ruin me—to pull me down. You know why. We won't go into that. I happen to know he afterwards paid her a lot of money for her interest in the business. When she tells me it was a square transaction I'll believe it, but not before."
He paced the floor, his hands in his coat pockets, his brows drawn down in a thoughtful scowl.
"You can stop me, I suppose, by having me locked up—but you can't keep me there forever. I'll get out some time. I don't say I'm going to shoot Bob Grand. I want you all to bear witness to this statement: whatever I do to him will be with these two hands. See 'em? Don't they look competent? He didn't use weapons on me, and I'm not going to use 'em on him. It's just a case of who has the best hands in this little game."
"Why, man, it would be cowardly in you to put your strength against his. You could crush him," groaned David.
Braddock smiled, almost joyously. "Won't it be a pretty sight? My hands on that fat neck of his! Ha!"
"And the 'angman's rope on that neck of yours," put in Joey, wiping his moist forehead.
"That's not the point," said Thomas Braddock.
He picked up his hat, which he had cast upon a chair, and, without another word to either of them—no word of thanks to Ruby, no word of appreciation to David, no word of gratitude to Joey—he strode out into the hall, through the door and down the steps.