“Driver! Come here.”
Harry heard his father’s stern voice from the opened doorway. “Driver! Take that girl wherever she wants to go. Harry, come in here! It’s time for a show-down.”
“It certainly is time for a show-down!” Harry assisted Patience from the car. “You may wait and earn the fare I just paid you or go to jail,” he said to the driver, and boldly led Patience into his father’s house.
The elder Boland turned into a den at the right of the front hallway and closed the door. He looked at Patience with an appraising glance, then kindly at his son.
“I suppose you must be humored in this affair,” he said in an indulgent manner, “while you haven’t sense to see that the present is scarcely the time to devote yourself to any such young woman. What do you say to a trip to California? I’ll foot all the bills, and later I will settle what you ask for on you.” He spoke to Patience.
“Thank you.” She spoke without a tremor. “You may do something substantial for my mother, because you—took—my poor father’s invention. Do you know, sir, that my poor father never recovered from that loss?”
“Hell’s fire!” yelled John Boland, “I—”
“You see, sir,” interrupted Harry deliberately, “it really is time for a show-down. I wouldn’t go away from Chicago at present, even for the wedding journey which we will pretend you were honestly offering us. I am going to stay and fight it out. You will have to stay and fight it out, too.”
“Me?” blustered Boland. “What have I got to fight out?”
“You know very well why you were at Druce’s cafe tonight. You were in a plot against me, leagued with that fellow, Druce, and his tribe, too, against the crusade started by Mary Randall to protect girls. You prefer to make money exploiting them. Not directly, perhaps, but conspicuously indirect.”