CHAPTER XXIV
“THE HIGHWAY OF THE UPRIGHT”
Up to the moment when he heard the report of Druce’s pistol and saw Carter Anson fall, Harry Boland’s whole being had been concentrated in a consuming horror at sight of Patience Welcome in the Cafe Sinister.
The crack of the pistol restored his composure. He saw clearly the infamy of the plot against her,—and against himself. One of the conspirators was already dead on the scene of this last of many crimes. Druce was struggling with the police, taking him for murder of Anson, his partner.
John Boland, the third conspirator, faced his son in a desperate composure.
“Come, Harry, we must get out of here. It will never do to be seen here—”
“For you!” Harry shook off his father’s hand upon his arm. “Go, by all means! I shall take care of myself.” He walked towards the singers’ platform beyond the seething crowd.
John Boland believed of himself afterwards that he would have followed Harry, but at the moment he saw a bowed and gray-haired woman before him, great fear and horror on her face, pressing her way in from scrubbing in the booths beyond. The mop and bucket with which she had been working were in either hand. At sight of his face she dropped her tools of toil and clutched his coat. It was Tom Welcome’s widow.