The music began, and the dancers once more whirled into the centre of the room and the crowd filled the space under the grand arch which led into the hall. Bivens was the centre of an admiring group of sycophants and worshipful snobs. The doctor's heart gave a mad throb of joy. His hour had come.
With quick strides he covered the space which separated them and without a moment's hesitation thrust his hand into his breast for his revolver. Not a muscle or nerve quivered. His finger touched the trigger softly and he gave Bivens a look which he meant he should take with him into eternity, when just beyond him he saw Harriet. She stood motionless with a look of mute agony on her fair young face, watching Stuart talk to Bivens's wife.
His finger slipped from the trigger and his hand loosed its deadly grip.
"Have I forgotten my baby!" he cried in sudden anguish. And then another vision flashed through his excited brain. A court room, a prisoner, his own bowed figure the centre of a thousand eyes while the jury brought in their verdict. A moment of awful silence and the foreman said:
"Guilty of murder in the first degree."
And the long piercing scream from the broken heart of his little girl.
"No, no, not that!" he groaned in sudden terror, his face white with pain. "I can't kill her, too. No, I must save her, that's why I want to kill him because he has imperilled her life, and I am about to crush her at a single blow. God save and help me!—God! Where is God? He helps those who help themselves in this madman's world. Well, then I'll look out for my own, too!"
His breath came in laboured gasps as one mad thought succeeded another.
"Yes!" he said hoarsely, "I must save her. I must be cunning. I must succeed, not fail. I must get what I came here for. I must save my baby. My own fate is of no importance. She is everything."
