"Unless," replied Viola very coolly and not at all impressed, "you should see fit to depose me before your uncle's death. You could do that, couldn't you?"
His face expressed surprise, mingled with a kind of vulpine admiration. "You knew all the time," he exclaimed with a laugh, "and hid it from me! No danger, my dear. You play fair with me and I'll stick to you. I've never seen a woman yet that could touch you for looks, brains, or manner. As an added inducement, remember that I offer your brother's life!"
Viola looked from Drayton to Terry and back again at Drayton.
"Terry!" she whispered at last. "I–I can't. Oh, forgive me, Terry! Yes, I'll do it for you. But he must save Mr. Drayton, too!"
"You'll do no such thing!" stormed the Irishman. "I'd rather see you dead, Viola, than wedded to that fox!"
"Don't consider me, Miss Viola," put in Drayton. "Save yourself if you wish and can. But not-for Heaven's sake, not in that way-not for my sake!"
The girl and the lawyer were looking into each other's eyes. The faint rose of Viola's cheeks brightened to a livelier hue. Cleverest saw, and jumped at the conclusion most natural to a born Servant of Penn.
"Oh, is that it?" he demanded angrily. "Is this man your reason for declining my offers? Perhaps I have been a bit hasty, after all. The wife of Justice Supreme can have had no former lovers, dead or living!"
Viola uttered a little, horrified cry. The pink flush became a burning flood of color. Drayton sprang, but Terry was before him. One second later the Superlative's body crashed against the steel wall of the cell and dropped in a limp heap to the floor.
At the sound of his fall, the door was again flung open. The occupants of the cell found themselves covered by four leveled rifle barrels. Cleverest had not come here alone, and it looked as if the guards were in a mood to fire upon them and clear the cell of life forthwith. But finding, upon examination, that their superior was merely stunned and had suffered no broken bones, they decided to leave punishment to their masters. With many threats they retired, bearing the insensible Cleverest with them.
"That settles it!" said Drayton. "Nobody can ever mistake your feelings toward them, Terry!"
"I only wish that I'd killed him," growled the Irishman.
It was seven p.m., and they were beginning to wonder if Penn Service wasted not even bread and water on condemned prisoners, when the door bolts again clicked smoothly.
"Our supper at last!" commented Terry with satisfaction.
He was mistaken. No food-bearing jailer appeared, but the chief of police himself, alert and smiling. Behind him the light glinted on a dozen rifle barrels. They were taking no further chances, it appeared, with the Trenmore temper.
"I have come to make a rather unpleasant announcement," began Quickest. He spoke with quiet courtesy, but firmly and as one prepared for an outbreak. "You were to have been passed to the All-Father in the morning, I believe. His Supremity has instructed that the time be advanced. Will you accompany me without resistance? If so, you may go unfettered."
CHAPTER 18: THE SWORD AND THE BELL
IT was with a dull feeling of despair that Drayton, recovering from the first momentary shock, heard Trenmore accept the chief's condition for the freedom of their limbs.
"We'll go with you quietly, chief, to the very door of your bloody slaughter-house. You've the word of Terence Trenmore for every one of us."
And then Trenmore had looked from one to the other of his friends with a fiery glance that commanded their obedience. He was first to leave the cell, not even taking Viola's hand, which she stretched out like a small child, brave but knowing its own helplessness.
Drayton went to her, and then, in the face of such near death he did what he would not have permitted himself to do had fate been more kind. He remembered that look in her eyes, before Terry had flung Cleverest across the cell, and putting his arm about the little sister of Trenmore, he drew her to him.
"Viola," he said, very softly and with a great, quiet tenderness, "I love you, dear, so much that death with you is mere happiness!"
And she answered, "You are my world, Bobby Drayton! If death was needed to show us this love, then death can never rob us of it!"
"Skidoo," said Bertram the burglar to the young lady he designated by that name. "I guess our numbers are up. I meant right by you, kid, and I'm darned sorry!"
"It ain't your fault," retorted Miss Skidoo, of the solemn, childlike eyes. "I guess I got a right to die with a good, straight guy like you!"
With ironical politeness, the chief of police broke in. "His Supremity might be willing to wait if he knew how much sad romance is going on here, but my own time is valuable. Two abreast, please-that's right. You can continue your farewells as you walk. I guess I can stand it! Twenty-nine, turn out that light before you close the door."
In front, between two of the rifle-bearing guards, marched Terence Trenmore. His dark, heavy face was sullen. His lids drooped over narrowed, fire-blue eyes. When his guards brushed against him, in a narrow passage, he shuddered away from them as one in mortal fear. They laughed, and one of them murmured, "The bigger they are the harder they fall, eh, Forty-nine?"
Having passed through two steel-lined corridors, the party of guards and prisoners came presently to a stair, ascended one flight and so reached the red marble passage of the administrative offices on the southern side. Tramping along this, they passed the open door of Mr. Virtue's darkened "courtroom," and came to the southern entrance of the Hall of Justice.
Quickest, who was now in the lead, laid his hand on the door to push it open. As he did so Trenmore, standing between his guards, spoke for the first time since leaving the cell. "Chief, before we go in I've a word for your ear alone."
The chief shook his head, smiling. "Sorry, but I have no time to listen, my man." And he pushed at the door so that it opened a trifle.
"I'll say it aloud, then!" snapped Trenmore. "You can listen or not as you please. I gave my promise just now that I'd come unresisting to the very door of your slaughter pen. There is the door and here am I to take my word back again!"
For all his bulk, Trenmore had the speed of a springing tiger. He was on the chief before any one realized that he had begun to move. He had swung that startled official before him with one arm about his chest. His right hand dragged from the holster at his captive's side a revolver of pleasantly efficient caliber. He clapped the muzzle to the chief's head, behind the ear.
"Shoot now and be damned to you, you scum of the earth!" Trenmore roared. "But the first finger that crooks at a trigger, I'll scatter this scut's brains the way he'll be dead before any of us!"
Twelve astonished and dismayed guards stood agape, with rifles half raised. After a moment two of them turned their weapons on Drayton and Bertram. The other prisoners, however, as much taken by surprise as the guards, were quiet enough.
The chief was quiet, too. He was helpless as in the grip of a gorilla, and he could feel the cold nose of his own weapon nuzzling behind his ear. He was not smiling now.
"You've a grain of sense after all," observed Trenmore approvingly. "And now the chief and myself will be taking a bit of a walk. Just don't interfere. And don't you harm the hair of a head of one of my friends there-mind that now!"
He began sidling along the wall, still holding his human shield before him. In a moment more he had regained the red corridor and begun backing down it. After him came the guards. One of them, on a sudden thought, dashed back to the golden door and through it.