Dear Sir:
Reporting in the matter of the young man who rescued your
daughter, in the recent accident, let me say I have discovered his
identity and some important facts concerning him. I take the
liberty of thinking that your intention of rewarding him, when
found, will be somewhat modified by this information.

This man's name is Gabriel Armstrong, age 24. Occupation, expert
electrical and chemical worker. A Socialist and labor agitator, of
the most dangerous type, because intellectual and well-read. A man
of considerable power and influence in Socialist and labor
circles. Has been something of a wanderer. Is well known to union
men and Socialists, all over the country. A powerful speaker, and
resourceful.

He was last employed at your testing-works on Staten Island.
Discharged by your Mr. Herzog, about two weeks ago for having, I
understand, been in possession of a certain red-covered note-book,
which Mr. Herzog found in his pocket. This book is the same which
you commissioned me to find, but which Mr. Herzog returned to you
before I undertook the search for it. The inference is that this
Armstrong is in possession of some private information about your
work, which may make him even more dangerous. Herzog informs me
that you and Mr. Waldron have had Armstrong blacklisted. But this
seems of no importance to the man, as he is clever and can live
anywhere, by casual labor and by working with the Socialists.

Armstrong is now at Syracuse. He has been tramping the roads. Have
had two of my operators enter his room at the Excelsior Lodging
House and search, his effects, while he was taking a bath. Can find
nothing to give me any legal means of proceeding against him. He
has some ready money, so a vagrancy-charge will not hold. If you
wish me to resort to extreme measures to "get" him, kindly give me
carte blanche, and guarantee me protection in case of trouble. The
job can be done, but it may be risky, in view of his influence and
backing among the Socialists and labor people. Before proceeding
further I want to know how far you will support me.

Am having him shadowed. He cannot get away. As yet he suspects
nothing. On receipt of your next, will take measures to put him
away for a few months. I know that, once he lands behind bars, his
finish can be easily arranged.

Trusting this information will prove satisfactory to you, and
awaiting your further instructions, I am,

Very truly yours,

THE COSMOS AGENCY,

Dillon F. Slade, Mgr.

Old Flint read this extraordinary communication twice through, then,
raising his head, growled in his shrunken throat, for all the world like
a wild beast. His gold tooth, gleaming in the light, made his rictus of
passion more venomous, more malevolent still.

"The--the Hell-hound!" he stammered, his eyes narrowed with hate and
rage. "Oh, wait! Wait till we land him! And this--_this_ is the devil,
the scum, that Kate, my daughter--"

He could not finish; but, clutching at his sparse gray hair, fell to
pacing the floor and mouthing execrations. Had he been of the sanguine
manner of body, he must inevitably have suffered an apoplexy. Only his
spare frame and bloodless type, due to the drug, saved his life, at that
first shock of rage and hate.

Grown calmer, presently, he took quick action. Seating himself at a desk
in the corner of his bed-chamber--a desk where some of his most
important private matters had been put through--he chose a sheet of
blank paper, with no monogram, and wrote:

Take immediate action. Will back you to the limit, and beyond. Ten
thousand bonus if you land him behind bars inside a week. Stop at
nothing, but get results. F.

This he folded and put in an envelope which he addressed to Slade, and
was about to seal, when another idea struck him.

"By God!" he exclaimed, smiting the desk. "It won't do to have this just
some ordinary charge. The thing has got to be disgraceful, unpardonable,
hideous!

"There are two things to be considered now. One is to 'get' him, in
connection with that red book of my plans--to head him off from making
any possible trouble in the development of the Air Trust.

"The other is--Kate! Nothing catches a woman, like martyrdom. If
anything happens to this cur, and she suspects that I've done it, out of
spite, all Hell can't hold her. I know her well enough for _that_. No,
this fellow has got to be put away on some charge that will absolutely
and utterly ruin him, in her eyes, for good and all--that will blast and
wreck him, forever, with her. Something that, when I tell her, will fill
her with loathing and horror. Something that will cause a terrible and
complete revulsion of feeling in her, and bring her back to Waldron, as
to a strong refuge in time of trouble. Something that will crush and
quell her, utterly cure her of those idiotic, school-girl notions of
hers, and make her--as she should be--submissive to my will and my
demands!"

He pondered a moment, an ugly, crafty smile on those old lips of his;
then, struck by sudden inspiration, laughed a dry, harsh laugh.

"The very thing!" he exulted, with the mirth of a vulture that has just
found a peculiarly revolting mass of carrion. "Fool that I was, not to
have thought of it before!"

Hastily he withdrew the letter from the envelope, opened it, and with
eager hand wrote three short sentences. He read these over, nodded
approval, and this time sealed and addressed the letter. Then he pushed
an electric button over the desk.

"Have this letter carried to this address at once," he commanded
Slawson. "Mr. Dillon Slade, 432 Highland Avenue, Rutherford, N. J.
See? Special delivery won't do. Have Sanders take it at once, in the
racer. No answer required. And after you've seen it start on its way,
come back here. I want to go to bed."

"Yes, sir. All right, sir," the valet bowed as he took the letter and
departed.

Ten minutes later, he was back again, helping old Flint undress.

Long after the Billionaire was in bed, in the big, luxurious room, with
its windows open toward the river--the room guarded all night by armed
men in the house and on the lawn outside--he lay there thinking of his
plot, chuckling to himself over its infernal cunning, and filled with
joy at the prospects now opening out ahead of him.

"Two birds with one stone, this time, for sure," he pondered. "Ha!
They'll try to beat old Isaac Flint at this or any other game, will
they? Man or woman, I don't care which, they'll never get away with
it--never, so long as life and breath remain in me!"

Then, soothed by these happy thoughts, and by a somewhat increased
dosage of his drug, the Billionaire gradually and contentedly fell
asleep, to dream of victory, and vengeance, and power.

Not in weeks had he slumbered so peacefully.

But for many hours after her father was asleep, Catherine sat at her
window, in a silk kimono, and with fevered pulses and dry eyes, with
throbbing heart and leaping pulses, thought long thoughts.

Sleepless she sat there, counting the hours tolled from the church-spire
in the town, below.

Morning still found her at the window, her brain afire, her heart laid
desolate and waste by the consuming struggle which, that night, had
swept and ravaged it.




CHAPTER XXI.

GABRIEL, GOOD SAMARITAN.


On the evening of July third, a week later, Gabriel Armstrong found
himself at Rochester, having tramped the hundred miles from Syracuse, by
easy stages. During this week, old Flint took good care not to reopen
the subject of the break with Waldron; and his daughter, too, avoided
it. They two were apparently at an impasse regarding it. But Flint
inwardly rejoiced, knowing full well the plot now under way. And though
Waldron urged him to take some further action and force the issue, Flint
bade him hold his peace, and wait, telling him all would yet be well.

Outwardly calmer, the old man was raging, within, more and ever more
bitterly, against Armstrong. On July first, Slade had reported in person
that his operators who were trailing the quarry had--in the
night--discovered in one of his pockets a maple leaf wrapped in a fine
linen handkerchief marked "C. J. F." Flint, recognizing his
daughter's initials, well-nigh burst a blood-vessel for wrath. But he
instructed Slade not to have the handkerchief abstracted from
Armstrong's possession. By no sign or hint must the victim be made aware
that he was being spied upon. When the final blow should fall, then
(reflected the Billionaire, with devilish satisfaction) all scores would
be paid in full, and more than paid.

July third, then, found Gabriel at Rochester, now seventy-five or
eighty miles from Niagara Falls, his goal, where--he had already
heard--ground was being actually broken for the huge new power plant of
which he alone, of all outsiders, understood the meaning. Gabriel
counted on spending the Fourth at Rochester where a Socialist picnic and
celebration had been arranged. Ordinarily, he would have taken part in
the work and volunteered as a speaker, but now, anxious to keep out of
sight, he counted merely on forming one of the crowd. There could be
little danger, thought he, in such a mass. Despite the recent stringent
censorship and military rule of the district by the new Mounted Police,
a huge gathering was expected. The big railway and lake-traffic strikes,
both recently lost, had produced keen resentment, and, as political and
economic power had been narrowed here, as all over the country, in these
last few months of on-sweeping capitalist domination, the Socialist
movement had been growing ever more and more swiftly.

"It will be worth seeing," thought Gabriel, as he stood outside the
lodging-house where he had taken a room for the night. The workers are
surely awakening, at last. The spirit I've been meeting, lately, is
uglier and more determined than anything I ever used to find, a year or
two ago. It seems to me, if conditions are like this all over the
country, the safety-valve is about ready to pop, and the masters had
better look out, or some of them are going to land in Hell!

"Yes, I'll stop over here, one day, and look and listen. Sorry I can't
take part, but I mustn't. My game, now, is to travel underground as it
were. I've got a bigger job in view than soap-boxing, just _now_!"

He ate a simple supper at an "Owl" lunch-cart, totally unaware that,
across the street, a couple of Cosmos men were waiting for him to come
out. And, after this, buying a Socialist paper, he strolled into Evans
Park to sit and read, a while, by the red light of the descending sun.

Here he remained till dark, smoking his briar, watching the dirty,
ragged children of the wretched wage-slaves at play; observing the
exploited men and women on the park-benches, as they sought a little
fresh air and respite from toil; and pondering the problems that still
lay before him. At times--often indeed--his thoughts wandered to the
maple-grove and the old sugar-house, far away on the Hudson. Memories of
the girl would not be banished, nor longings for her. Who she might be,
he still knew not. Unwilling to learn, he had refrained from looking up
the number he had copied from the plate of the wrecked machine. He had
even abstained from reading the papers, a few days, lest he might see
some account of the accident. A strange kind of unwillingness to know
the woman's name possessed him--a feeling that, if he positively
identified her as one of some famous clan of robbers and exploiters, he
could no longer cherish her memory or love the thought of how they two
had, for an hour, sat together and talked and been good, honest friends.

"No," he murmured to himself, "it's better this way--just to recall her
as a girl in need, a girl who let me help her, a girl I can always
remember with kind thoughts, as long as I live!"

From his pocket he took the little handkerchief, which wrapped the
leaf, once part of her bed. A faint, elusive scent still hung about
it--something of her, still it seemed. He closed his eyes, there on the
hard park bench, and let his fancies rove whither they would; and for a
time it seemed to him a wondrous peace possessed him.

"If it could only have been," he murmured, at last. "If only it could
be!"

Then suddenly urged by a realization of the hopelessness of it all, he
stood up, pocketed the souvenirs of her again, and walked away in the
dusk; away, through the park; away, at random, through squalid, ugly
streets, where the first electric-lights were just beginning to flare;
where children swarmed in the close heat, wallowing along the gutters,
dodging teams and cars, as they essayed to play, setting off a few
premature firecrackers and mocking the police--all in all, leading the
ugly, unnatural, destructive life of all children of the city
proletariat.

"Poor little devils!" thought Gabriel, stopping to observe a dirty group
clustered about an ice-cream cart, where cheap, adulterated,
high-colored stuff was being sold for a penny a square--aniline poison,
no doubt, and God knows what else. "Poor little kids! Not much like the
children of the masters, eh? with their lawns and playgrounds, their
beaches and flowery fields, their gardens and fine schools, their dogs,
ponies, autos and all the rest! Some difference, all right--and it takes
a thousand of _these_, yes, ten thousand, to keep one of _those_.
And--and _she_ was one of the rich and dainty children! Her beauty,
health and grace were bought at the price of ten thousand other
children's health, and joy and lives! Ah, God, what a price! What a
cruel, awful, barbarous price to pay!"

Saddened and pensive, he passed on, still thinking of the woman he could
not banish from his mind, despite his bitterness against her class.

So he walked on and on, now through better streets and now through
worse, up and down the city.

Here and there, detonations and red fire marked the impatience of some
demonstrator who could not wait till midnight to show his ardent
patriotism and his public spirit by risking life and property. The
saloons were all doing a land-office business, with the holiday
impending and the thermometer at 97. Now and then, slattern women, in
foul clothes and with huge, gelatinous breasts, could be seen rushing
the growler, at the "family entrance" of some low dive. Even little
girls bore tin pails, for the evening's "scuttle o' suds" to be consumed
on roof, or in back yard of stinking tenement, or on some fire-escape.
The city, in fine, was relaxing from its toil; and, as the workers for
the most part knew no other way, nor could afford any, they were trying
to snatch some brief moment of respite from the Hell of their slavery,
by recourse to rough ribaldry and alcohol.

Nine o'clock had just struck from the church-spires which mocked the
slums with their appeal to an impassive Heaven, when, passing a foul and
narrow alley that led down to the Genesee River, Gabriel saw a woman
sitting on a doorstep, weeping bitterly.

This woman--hardly more than a girl--was holding a little bundle in one
hand. The other covered her face. Her sobs were audible. Grief of the
most intense, he saw at once, convulsed her. Two or three by-standers,
watching with a kind of pleased curiosity, completed the scene, most
sordid in its setting, there under the flicker of a gas-light on the
corner.

"Hm! What now?" thought Gabriel, stopping to watch the little tragedy.
"More trouble, eh? It's trouble all up and down the line, for these poor
devils! Nothing but trouble for the slave-class. Well, well, let's see
what's wrong _now_!"

Gabriel turned down the alley, drew near the little group, and halted.

"What's wrong?" he asked, in the tone of authority he knew how to use;
the tone which always overbore his outward aspect, even though he might
have been clad in rags; the tone which made men yield to him, and women
look at him with trustful eyes, even as the Billionaire's daughter had
looked.

"Search _me_!" murmured one of the men, shrugging his shoulders. "_I_
can't git nothin' out o' her. She's been sittin' here, cryin', a few
minutes, that's all I know; an' she won't say nothin' to nobody.

"Any of you men know anything about it?" demanded Gabriel, looking at
the rest.

A murmur of negation was his only answer. One or two others, scenting
some excitement, even though only that of a distressed woman--common
sight, indeed!--lingered near. The little group was growing.

Gabriel bent and touched the woman's shoulder.

"What's the matter?" asked he, in a gentle voice. "If you're in trouble,
let me help you."

Renewed sobs were her only answer.

"If you'll only tell me what's the matter," Gabriel went on, "I'm sure
I can do something for you."

"You--you can't!" choked the woman, without raising her head from the
corner of the ragged shawl that she was holding over her eyes. "Nobody
can't! Bill, he's gone, and Eddy's gone, and Mr. Micolo says he won't
let me in. So there ain't nothin' to do. Let me alone--oh dear, oh dear,
dear!"

Fresh tears and grief. The little knot of spectators, still growing,
nodded with approval, and figuratively licked its lips, in satisfaction.
Somewhere a boy snickered.

"Come, come," said Gabriel, bending close over the grief-stricken woman,
"pull together, and let's hear what the trouble is! Who's Bill, and
who's Eddy--and what about Mr. Micolo? Come, tell me. I'm sure I can do
something to straighten things out."

No answer. Gabriel turned to the increasing crowd, again.

"Any of you people know what about it?" he asked.

Again no answer, save that one elderly man, standing on the steps beside
the woman, remarked casually:

"I guess she's got fired out of her room. That's all I know."

Gabriel took her by the arm, and drew her up.

"Come, now!" said he, a sterner note in his voice. "This won't do! You
mustn't sit here, and draw a crowd. First thing you know an officer will
be along, and you may get into trouble. Tell me what's wrong, and I
promise to see you through it, as far as I can."

She raised her face, now, and looked at him, a moment. Tear-stained and
dishevelled though she was, and soiled by marks of drink and
debauchery, Gabriel saw she must once have been very beautiful and still
was comely.

"Well," he asked. "Aren't you going to tell me?"

"Tell you?" she repeated. "I--oh, I can't! Not in front of all them
men!"

"Very well!" said he, "walk with me, and give me your story. Will you do
that? At all events, you mustn't stay here, making a disturbance on the
highway. If you knew the police as well as I do, you'd understand that!"

"You're right, friend," said she, hoarsely. "I'm on, now. Come along
then--I'll tell you. It ain't much to tell; but it's a lot to me!"

She glanced at the curious faces of the watchers, then turned and
followed Gabriel, who was already walking up the alley, toward the
brighter lights of Stuart Street. For a moment, one or two of the men
hesitated as though undecided whether or not to follow after; but one
backward look by Gabriel instantly dispelled any desire to intrude. And
as Gabriel and the woman turned into the street, the little knot of
curiosity-seekers dissolved into its component atoms, and vanished.




CHAPTER XXII.

THE TRAP IS SPRUNG.


"It--it's all along o' that there Mr. Micolo!" the woman suddenly
exclaimed, "Him an' his rent-bill! If he'd ha' let me in, there,
tonight, I could ha' got Ed's things an' then started to my sister's,
out to Scottsville. But he wouldn't. He claimed they was
two-seventy-five still owin', and I didn't have but about fifty cents,
so I couldn't pay it. So he wouldn't let me in. Natchally, anybody'd
feel bad, like that, 'specially when a man told 'em he'd hold their
kid's clothes an' things till they paid--which they couldn't!"

"Naturally, of course," answered Gabriel, rather dazed by this sudden
burst of details, with which she seemed to think he should already be
quite familiar--details all sordid and commonplace, through which he
seemed to perceive, dimly as in a dark glass, some mean and ugly tragedy
of poverty and ignorance and sin.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, all at once. "If so, come in here, where we
can talk quietly and get things straight." He pointed at a cheap
restaurant, across the street.

"Hungry? Gord, yes!" she exclaimed. Only I--I wouldn't ask, if I fell on
the sidewalk! Fifty cents--yes, I got that much, but I been tryin' to
get enough to pay Mr. Micolo, an' get hold of Ed's things, an'--"

"All right, forget that, now," commanded Gabriel. He took her by the
arm and piloted her across the thoroughfare, then into the dingy
hash-house and to a table in a far corner. A few minutes later, pretty
much everything on the bill of fare was before them on the greasy table.

"Not a word till you're satisfied," directed Armstrong. "I'll just take
a little bread and coffee, to keep you company."

The woman adequately proved her statement that she was hungry. Rarely
had Gabriel seen anybody eat with such ravenous appetite. He watched her
with satisfaction, and when she could consume no more, smiled as he
asked:

"Now, then, feel better? If so, let's tackle the next problem. What's
your grief?"

The woman stared at him a long moment before she made reply. Then she
exclaimed suddenly:

"You ain't no kind of 'bull,' are you? Nor plain-clothes man?"

Gabriel shook his head.

"No," said he, "nothing of that kind. You can trust me. Let's have the
story."

"Hm! It ain't much, I s'pose," she answered still half-suspiciously.
"Bill and me was livin' together, that's all. No, not married, nor
nothin'--but--"

"All right. Go on."

"That was last winter. When the kid happened--Ed, you know--Bill, he got
sore, an' beat it. Then I--I went on the street, to keep Ed. Nothin'
else to do, Mister, so help me, an'--"

"Never mind, I understand," said Gabriel. "What next?"

"And after that, I gets sick. _You_ know. Almost right away. So I has
to go to St. Luke's hospital. I leaves Ed with Mrs. McCane, at the same
house. That place in the alley, you know. Well, when I gets out, the
boy's dead. _An_' they never even tells me, till I goes back! An' I
can't even get his things. Because why? Mrs. McCane's gone, Gord knows
where, an' Mr. Micolo says I still owe two-seventy-five. I want to get
down there to Scottsville, to my sister's; but curse _me_ if I'll go
till I pay that devil an' get them clothes!"

A sudden savage light in her blurred eyes betrayed the passion of the
mother-love, through all the filth and soilure of her degradation.
Gabriel felt his heart deeply moved. He bent toward her, across the
table, touched her hand and asked:

"Will you accept five dollars, to pay this man and get you down to
Scottsville?"

"Huh?" she queried, gazing at him with vacant, uncomprehending eyes.

He repeated his query. Then, as he saw the slow tears start and roll
down her wan cheeks, he felt a greater joy within his breast than if the
world and all its treasures had been his.

"Will I take it?" she whispered. "Gord, _will_ I? You bet I will! That
is, if I can have your name, an' pay it back some time?"

He promised, and wrote it down for her, giving as his address Socialist
Headquarters in Chicago. Then, without publicity, he slipped a V into
her trembling hand.

"Come on," said he. "_That's_ all settled!"

He paid the check, and they went out, together. For a moment they stood
together, undecided, on the sidewalk.

"Couldn't I get them things to-night, an' start?" asked she, eagerly.
"There's a train at 11:08, on the B. R. & P."

"All right," he assented. "Can you see this Micolo, now? It's after
ten."

"Oh, _that_ don't make no difference," she answered. "He runs a pawnshop
over here on Dexter Street, two blocks east. He'll be open till
midnight, easy, tomorrow bein' the Fourth."

"Come on, then," said Gabriel. "I'll see you through the whole business,
and onto the train. Maybe I can help you, all along."

Without another word she started, with Gabriel at her side. They
traversed the main street, two blocks, then turned to the left down a
narrower, darker one.

"Here's Micolo's," said she, pausing at a doorway. Gabriel nodded. "All
right," he answered. He had not noted, nor did he dream, that, at the
corner behind them, two slinking, sneaking figures were now watching his
every move.

The woman turned the knob, and entered. Gabriel followed.

"It's on the second floor," said she. Gabriel saw a sign, on the
landing: "S. L. Micolo, Pawn Broker," and motioned her to precede
him.

In a minute they had reached the upper hallway. The woman opened another
door. The room, inside, was dark.

"This way," said she. "He's in the inside office, I guess. The light
must ha' gone out here, some way or other."

Gabriel hesitated. Some inkling, some vague intuition all at once had
come upon him, that all was not well. At his elbow some invisible force
seemed plucking. "Come away! Come back, before it is too late!" some
ghostly voice seemed calling in his ear.

But still, he did not fully understand. Still he remained there, his
mind obsessed by the plausibility of the woman's story and by the pity
he so keenly felt.

And now he heard her voice again:

"Mr. Micolo! Oh, Mr. Micolo! Where are you?"

Striking a match, he advanced into the room.

"Any gas here?" he asked, peering about for a burner.

Suddenly he started with violent emotion. Behind him, in some
unaccountable way, the door had been closed. He heard a key turn,
softly.

"What--what's this?" he exclaimed. He heard the woman moving about,
somewhere in the gloom. "See here!" he cried. "What kind of a--?"

The match burned brightly, all at once. He peered about him, wide-eyed.

"This is no office!" shouted he. "Here, you! What's the meaning of this?
This is a bed-room!"

Sudden realization of the trap stunned and sickened him.

"God! They've got me! Flint and Waldron--they've landed me, at last!" he
choked. "But--but not till I've broken a few heads, by God!"

The match fell from his burnt fingers. Whirling toward the door, he
rained powerful kicks upon it. He would get out, he must get out, at all
hazards!

Suddenly the woman began to scream, with harsh and piercing cries that
seemed to rip the very atmosphere.

[Illustration: Aiming at the base of the skull she struck.]

At the third scream, or the fourth, the key was turned and the door
jerked open.

In its aperture, three men stood--the two who had been so long trailing
Gabriel, and a policeman, burly, red-jowled, big-paunched.

Gabriel stared at them. His mouth opened, then closed again without a
word. As well for a trapped animal to make explanations to the Indian
hunter, as for him to tell these men the truth. The truth? _They_ knew
the truth; and they were there to crucify him. He read it in their
cruel, eager eyes.

The woman had stopped screaming now, and was weeping with abandon,
pouring forth a tale of insults and abuse and robbery, with hysterical
sobs.

Full in the faces of the three men Gabriel sneered.

"You've done a good job of it, this time, you skunks!" he gibed. "I'm
on. You'll get me, in the end; but not just yet. The first man through
this door gets his head broken--and that goes, too!"

With a snarl of "You damned white slaver!" the officer raised his
night-stick and hurled himself at Gabriel.

Gabriel ducked and planted a terrific left-hander on the "bull's" ear.
Roaring, the majesty of the law careened against the bed, crashed the
flimsy thing to wreckage and went down.

Then, fighting back into the gloom of the trap, Gabriel engaged the two
detectives. For a moment he held them. One went to the floor with an
uppercut under the chin; but came back. The other landed hard on
Gabriel's jaw.

He turned to strike down, again, the first of the two. He heard the bed
creaking, and saw the policeman struggling to arise. In a whirlwind of
blows, the second detective flailed at him, striving to beat down his
guard and floor him with a vicious rib-jolt.

"All's fair, here!" thought Gabriel, snatching up a chair. For a moment
he brandished it on high. With this weapon, he knew--though final defeat
was inevitable, when reinforcements should arrive--he could sweep a
clear space.

Perhaps he might even yet escape! He heard feet trampling on the stairs,
and his heart died within him. Well, even though escape were impossible,
he would fight to a finish and die game, if die he must!

Down swung the chair, and round, crashing to ruin as it struck the
policeman who was just getting to his feet again. Oaths, cries, screams
made the place hideous. Dust rose, and blood began to flow.

Armed now with one leg of the chair, Gabriel retreated; and as he went,
he hurled the bitterness of all his scorn and hate upon these vile
conspirators.

And as he flayed them with his tongue, he struck; and like Samson
against the Philistines, he did great execution.

Like Samson, too, he lost his power through a woman's treachery. For,
even as the attackers seemed to fall back, shattered and at a loss
before such fury and tremendous strength, behind Gabriel the woman rose,
a laugh of malice on her lips, the policeman's long and heavy
night-stick in her hand.

A moment she poised it, crouching as he--seeing her not--swung his
weapon and hurled his defiance at the baffled men in front.

Then, aiming at the base of the skull, she struck.

Sudden bright lights spangled the darkness, for Gabriel. Everything
whirled about, in dizzying confusion. A strange, far roaring sounded in
his ears.

Then he fell; and oblivion took him to its blessed peace and rest; and
all grew still and black.