"Certainly."
"My handwriting would be disguised--but a person who really knows my writing would penetrate the attempted disguise and recognize it as mine.
My letter would be addressed to my grandmother requesting her to express my recent purchase of forfeited pledges to me in Chicago. A clever person reading the letter would be certain I was asking her to send me my clothes."
"What"s the point to that?"
"One detail of the police"s search for me will be to open secretly, with the aid of the postal authorities, all mail addressed to my grandmother.
They will steam open this letter about my clothes, then seal it and let it be delivered. But they will have learned that I have escaped them and am in Chicago. They will drop the hunt here and telegraph the Chicago police, And of course the news will leak through to my old friends, and they"ll also stop looking for me in New York."
"I see."
"And enclosed in another letter written by you, I"ll send an order, also to be posted in Chicago, to a good friend of mine asking him to call at the express office, get my clothes, and hold them until I call or send for them. When he goes and asks for the clothes, the Chicago police will get him and find the order on him. They"ll have no charge at all against him, but they"ll have further proof that I"m in Chicago or some place in the Middle West. The effect will be definitely to transfer the search from New York."
"Yes, I see," repeated Miss Sherwood. "Go ahead and do it; I"ll help you. But for the present you"ve got to remain right here in the apartment, as I said. And later, when you think the letters have had their effect, you must use the utmost caution."
"Certainly," agreed Larry.
"Now as to your making a start in business. I suspect that my affairs are in a very bad shape. Things were left to my brother, as he told you.
I have a lot of papers, all kinds of accounts, which he has brought to me and he"s bringing me a great many more. I can"t make head or tail of them, and I think my brother is about as much befuddled as I am. I believe only an expert can understand them. Mr. Hunt says you have a very keen mind for such matters. I wish you"d take charge of these papers, and try to straighten them out."
"Miss Sherwood," Larry said slowly, "you know my record and yet you risk trusting me with your affairs?"
"Not that I wouldn"t take the risk--but whatever there is to steal, some one else has already stolen it, or will steal it. Your work will be to discover thefts or mistakes, and to prevent thefts or mistakes if you can. You see I am not placing any actual control over stealable property in you--not yet.... Well, what do you say?"
"I can only say, Miss Sherwood, that you are more than good, and that I am more than grateful, and that I shall do my best!"
Miss Sherwood regarded him thoughtfully for a long s.p.a.ce. Then she said: "I am going to place something further in your hands, for if you are as clever as I think you are, and if life has taught you as much as I think it has, I believe you can help me a lot. My brother d.i.c.k is wild and reckless. I wish you"d look out for him and try to hold him in check where you can. That is, if this isn"t placing too great a duty on you."
"That"s not a duty--it"s a compliment!"
"Then that will be all for the present. I"ll see you again in an hour or two, when I shall have some things ready to turn over to you."
Back in his bedroom Larry walked exultantly to and fro. He had security!
And at last he had a chance--perhaps the chance he had been yearning for through which he was ultimately to prove himself a success!...
He wondered yet more about Miss Sherwood. And again about her and Hunt.
Miss Sherwood was clever, gracious, everything a man could want in a woman; and he guessed that behind her humorous references to Hunt there was a deep feeling for the big painter who was living almost like a tramp in the attic of the d.u.c.h.ess"s little house. And Larry knew Miss Sherwood was the only woman in Hunt"s life; Hunt had said as much. They were everything to each other; they trusted each other. Yet there was some wide breach between the two; evidently his own crisis had forced the only communication which had pa.s.sed between the two for months. He wondered what that breach could be, and what had been its cause.
And then an idea began to open its possibilities. What a splendid return, if, somehow, he could do something that would help bring together these two persons who had befriended him!...
But most of the time, while he waited for Miss Sherwood to summon him again, he wondered about Maggie. Yes, as he had told Miss Sherwood, Maggie was the most important problem of his life: all his many other problems were important only in the degree that they aided or hindered the solution of Maggie. Where was she?--what was she doing?--how was he, in this pleasant prison which he dared not leave, ever to overcome her scorn of him, and ever to divert her from that dangerous career in which her proud and excited young vision saw only the brilliant and profitable adventure of high romance?
CHAPTER XIII
When Maggie rode away forever from the house of the d.u.c.h.ess with Barney Palmer and her father, after the denunciation of Larry by the three of them as a stool and a squealer, she was the thrilled container of about as many diversified emotions as often bubble and swirl in a young girl at one and the same time. There was anger and contempt toward Larry: Larry who had weakly thrown aside a career in which he was a master, and who had added to that bad the worse of being a traitor. There was the lifting sense that at last she had graduated; that at last she was set free from the drab and petty things of life; that at last she was riding forth into the great brilliant world in which everything happened--forth into the fascinating, bewildering Unknown.
Barney and Old Jimmie talked to each other as the taxicab b.u.mped through the cobbled streets, their talk being for the most part maledictions against Larry Brainard. But their words were meaningless sounds to the silent Maggie, all of whose throbbing faculties were just then merged into an excited endeavor to perceive the glorious outlines of the destiny toward which she rode. However, as the cab turned into Lafayette Place and rolled northward, her curiosity about the unknown became conscious and articulate.
"Where am I going?" she asked.
"First of all to a nice, quiet hotel." It was Barney who answered; somehow Barney had naturally moved into the position of leader, and as naturally her father had receded to second place. "We"ve got everything fixed, Maggie. Rooms reserved, and a companion waiting there for you."
"A companion!" exclaimed Maggie. "What for?"
"To teach you the fine points of manners, and to help you buy clothes.
She"s a cla.s.sy bird all right. I advertised and picked her out of a dozen who applied."
"Barney!" breathed Maggie. She was silent a dazed moment, then asked: "Just--just what am I going to do?"
"Listen, Maggie: I"ll spill you the whole idea. I"d have told you before, but it"s developed rather sudden, and I"ve not had a real chance, and, besides, I knew you"d be all for it. Jimmie and I have canned that stock-selling scheme for good--unless an easy chance for it develops later. Our big idea now is to put YOU across!" Barney believed that there might still remain in Maggie some lurking admiration for Larry, some influence of Larry over her, and to eradicate these completely by the brilliance of what he offered was the chief purpose of his further quick-spoken words. "To put you across in the biggest kind of a way, Maggie! A beautiful, clever woman who knows how to use her brains, and who has brainy handling, can bring in more money, and in a safer way, than any dozen men! And I tell you, Maggie, I"ll make you a star!"
"Barney!... But you haven"t told me just what I"m to do."
"The first thing will be just a try-out; it"ll help finish your education. I"ve got it doped out, but I"ll not tell you till later. The main idea is not to use you in just one game, Maggie, but to finish you off so you"ll fit into dozens of games--be good year after year. A big actress who can step right into any big part that comes her way. That"s what pays! I tell you, Maggie, there"s no other such good, steady proposition on earth as the right kind of woman. And that"s what you"re going to be!"
Maggie had heard much this same talk often before. Then it had been vague, and had dealt with an indefinite future. Now she was too dazzled by this picture of near events which the eager Barney was drawing to be able to make any comment.
"I"ll be right behind you in everything, and so will Jimmie," Barney continued in his exciting manner--"but you"ll be the party out in front who really puts the proposition over. And we"ll keep to things where the police can"t touch us. Get a man with coin and position tangled up right in a deal with a woman, and he"ll never let out a peep and he"ll come across with oodles of money. Hundreds of ways of working that. A strong point about you, Maggie, is you have no police record. Neither have I, though the police suspect me--but, as I said, I"ll keep off the stage as much as I can. I tell you, Maggie, we"re going to put over some great stuff! Great, I tell you!"
Maggie felt no repugnance to what had been said and implied by Barney.
How could she, when since her memory began she had lived among people who talked just these same things? To Maggie they seemed the natural order. At that moment she was more concerned by a fascinating necessity which Barney"s flamboyant enterprise entailed.
"But to do anything like that, won"t I need clothes?"
"You"ll need "em, and you"ll have "em! You"re going to have one of the swellest outfits that ever happened. You"ll make Paris ashamed of itself!"
"No use blowing the whole roll on Maggie"s clothes," put in Old Jimmie, speaking for the first time.
Barney turned on him caustically, almost savagely. "You"re a h.e.l.l of a father, you are--counting the pennies on his own daughter! I told you this was no piker"s game, and you agreed to it--so cut out the idea you"re in any nickel-in-the-slot business!"
Old Jimmie felt physical pain at the thought of parting from money on such a scale. His earlier plans concerning Maggie had never contemplated any such extravagance. But he was silenced by the dominant force behind Barney"s sarcasm.
"Miss Grierson--she"s your companion--knows what"s what about clothes,"
continued Barney to Maggie. "Here"s the dope as I"ve handed it to her.
You"re an orphan from the West, with some dough, who"s come to New York as my ward and Jimmie"s and we want you to learn a few things. To her and to any new people we meet I"m your cousin and Jimmie is your uncle.
You"ve got that all straight?"
"Yes," said Maggie.
"You"re to use another name. I"ve picked out Margaret Cameron for you.
We can call you Maggie and it won"t be a slip-up--see? If any of the coppers who know you should tumble on to you, just tell "em you dropped your own name so"s to get clear of your old life. They can"t do anything to you. And tell "em you inherited a little coin; that"s why you"re living so swell. They can"t do anything about that either. ... Here"s where we get out. Got a sitting-room, two bedrooms and a bath hired for you here. But we"ll soon move you into a cla.s.sier hotel."
The taxi had stopped in front of one of the unpretentious, respectable hotels in the Thirties, just off Fifth Avenue, and Maggie followed the two men in. This hotel did, indeed, in its people, its furnishings, its atmosphere, seem sober and commonplace after the Ritzmore; but at the Ritzmore she had been merely a cigarette-girl, a paid onlooker at the gayety of others. Here she was a real guest--here her great life was beginning! Maggie"s heart beat wildly.