d it at a glance as
the anonymous note he had written to lure young Boland to the cafe.

"Did you write that?" demanded Boland.

Druce struggled in a frenzy.

"To hell with you and your questions," he yelled. "Let me by or I'll kill
you."

He grappled with Boland and the two men wrestled out to the edge of the
big drinking room.

"You wrote it," Boland hissed in his ear.

"It's a lie. I'm going to give you the beating of your life."

The elder Boland, who had followed Druce, fell upon his son. Harry turned
and recognized his father.

"You here?" he demanded, facing his parent.

"Yes," replied John Boland, "I'm here. I came, because I had been
informed that you were to meet a woman of the tenderloin in this place;
and when I find you, I find you fighting with a dive-keeper."

Harry dropped the struggling Druce and turned on his father.

"What do you mean?" he asked, defiantly.

"I mean just that," replied John Boland. He turned toward the musicians'
stand and pointed dramatically at Patience Welcome, who, her face almost
as pale as her white lace gown, was advancing toward the front of the
platform to sing.

Harry Boland's face went white as hers.

The words he gasped were drowned by a cry, Elsie Welcome, coming for the
first time since her return to Druce into the drinking room, saw her
sister standing upon the rostrum, poised to sing.

"Patience! Patience!" she screamed in a voice of despair. "Oh, my sister,
what brought you to this place?"

She fell to the floor fainting. The whole cafe was in an uproar.

Carter Anson, roused to fury by the disturbance, fought his way through
the crowd to the place where he had seen her fall.

Druce, escaped from Harry Boland, struggled from another angle to make
his way through the mob. As if by magic half a score of policemen
suddenly hemmed in the fighting mass. Druce, struggling blindly to make a
pathway for himself, suddenly looked up to see Mary Randall standing on a
table on the opposite side of the room directing the police. A wave of
maniacal anger overwhelmed him. In a flash his hand went to his pocket
and reappeared with a pistol.

There was an explosion, a man's yell of rage, followed by a choking gulp
of mortal anguish. Druce was seized and flung to the floor.

At the same moment Mary Randall, leaping down from her table, ran to the
center of the room. Carter Anson lay there, struggling through his last
throes,--the bullet in his brain.