“I don’t want to look at it,” said the Doctor.

“No, I guess you don’t!  It’s from the ‘Clarion,’ that clipping.  And the Neverfail Company that makes the fake abortion pills is you.”

“It doesn’t mean—­that.  You’ve misread it.”

“It does mean just that to every poor, silly fool of a girl that reads it.  What else can it mean?  ’The most obstinate cases’—­”

“Don’t!  Don’t!” There was a pause, then: 

“Of course, you can’t stay in the Certina factory after this.”

A bitter access of mirth seized the girl.  The sound of it

      “rang cracked and thin,
  Like a fiend’s laughter, heard in Hell,
  Far down.”

“Of course!” she mocked.  “The pious and holy Dr. Surtaine couldn’t have an employee who went wrong.  Not even though it was his lies that helped tempt her.”

“Don’t try to put it off on me.  You are suffering for your own sin, my girl,” accused the quack.

“I’ll stand my share of it; the suffering and the disgrace, if there is any.  But you’ve got to stand your share.  You promised to get me out of this and I believed you.”

“I!  Promised to—­”

“In plain print.”  She tossed the clipping at him with her left hand.  The other she held in her lap, under a light wrap which she carried.  “And I believed you.  I thought you were square.  Then when the pills didn’t help, I went to a doctor, and he laughed and said they were nothing but sugar and flavoring.  He wouldn’t help me.  He said no decent doctor would. You ain’t a decent doctor.  You’re a lying devil.  Are you going to help me out?”

“If you had come in a proper spirit—­”

“That’s enough.  I’ve got my answer.”  She rose slowly to her feet.  “After I found out what was wrong with me, I went home to my father.  I didn’t tell him about myself.  But I told him I was quitting the Certina business.  And he told me about my mother, how you sent her to her death.  One word from me would have brought him here after you. This time he wouldn’t have missed you.  Then they’d have hung him, I suppose.  That’s why I held my tongue.  You killed my mother, you and your quack medicines; and now you’ve done this to me.”  Her hand jerked up out of the wrap.  “I don’t see where you come in to live any longer,” said Milly Neal deliberately.

Dr. Surtaine looked into the muzzle of a revolver.

There was a step on the soft rug outside, the curtain of the door to Dr. Surtaine’s right parted, and Hal appeared.  He carried a light stick.

“I thought I heard—­” he began.  Then, seeing the revolver, “What’s this!  Put that down!”

“Don’t move, either of you,” warned the girl.  “I haven’t said my say out.  You’re a fine-matched pair, you two!  Him with his sugar-pills and you, Hal Surtaine, with your lying promises.”

Lying promises!  The phrase, thus used in the girl’s mouth against the son, struck to the father’s heart, confirming his dread.  It was Hal, then.  For the moment he forgot his instant peril, in his sorrow and shame.