Harvey felt his limbs trembling, felt something trickle down his face. He was beaten.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FORCES THAT CONQUER
When the tenderloin learned that Martin Druce had been released on a bond for thirty thousand dollars, the tenderloin laughed.
The laugh was low and cunning and there was more than the suggestion of a sneer in it. It rang from one end of the district to the other, convulsing dive-keepers who for days had been as funereal as undertakers. It sounded in dance halls and bagnios, in barrooms and gambling dens.
It eddied up into Chicago’s higher air and found an echo in clubs frequented by distinguished financier-politicians.
John Boland had won! The brain that had never failed had proved its resourcefulness once again in this hour of dire trouble. Druce was gone. He would never be heard of in Chicago again. It had cost thirty thousand dollars, but what was thirty thousand dollars? Mary Randall and her crusaders were crushed. Anson was dead. Druce was gone.
What mattered it now how much evidence Mary Randall had gathered in against the Cafe Sinister! There would be a period of quiet. The tenderloin would carefully observe all the proprieties. Then the case of the State against Martin Druce would be called and Druce would not respond to that summons. And so Mary Randall’s sensation would die an unnatural death—death from smothering, death from lack of expression. Afterward the tenderloin would resume its old operations. No wonder the tenderloin laughed!