"Why, Maggie!" he exclaimed, holding out his hand.
"Larry!"
She was thrillingly confused by his surprised admiration. For a moment they stood gazing at each other, holding hands. The clothes given him on leaving prison were of course atrocious, but in all else he measured up to her dreams: lithe, well-built, handsome, a laugh ready on his lips, and the very devil of daring in his smiling, gray-blue eyes.
"How you have grown up, Maggie!" he said, still amazed.
"That"s all I"ve had to do for two years," she returned.
"Come on in, Larry," said the d.u.c.h.ess.
Larry shut the door, bowed with light grace as he had to pa.s.s in front of Maggie, and crossed to the d.u.c.h.ess.
"h.e.l.lo, grandmother," he said as though he had last seen her the day before. He held out his hand, the left one, and she took it in a mummified claw. In all his life he had never kissed his grandmother, nor did he remember ever having been kissed by her.
"Glad you"re back, Larry." She dropped his hand. "The man"s name is Hunt."
Larry turned to the painter. His laughing eyes could be sharp; they were penetratingly sharp now. And so were Hunt"s eyes.
Larry held out his hand, again the left. "And so you"re the painter?"
"They call me a painter," responded Hunt, "but none of them believe I"m a painter."
Larry turned again to Maggie. "And so you"re actually Maggie! Meaning no offense"--and there was a smiling audacity in his face that it would have been hard to have taken offense at--"I don"t see how Old Jimmie Carlisle"s daughter got such looks without stealing them."
"Well, then," retorted Maggie, "I don"t see how you got your looks unless--"
She broke off and bit her tongue. She had been about to retort with the contrast between Larry"s face and his shriveled, hook-nosed grandmother"s. They all perceived her intention, however.
Larry came instantly to her rescue with almost imperceptible ease.
"Dinner!" he exclaimed, gazing at the miscellany of dishes on the table.
"Am I invited?"
"Invited?" said Hunt. "You"re the guest of honor."
"Then might the guest of honor beg the privilege of cleaning up a bit?"
Larry drew his right hand from his coat pocket, where it had been all this while, and started to unwind the handkerchief which he had wound about his knuckles as he had crossed from the pier.
"Is your hand hurt much?" Maggie inquired eagerly.
"Just skinned my knuckles."
"How?"
"They happened to connect with a flatfoot"s jaw while he was trying to make hypnotic pa.s.ses at me. He"s coming to about now. Officer Gavegan."
"Gavegan!" exclaimed Hunt. "You picked a tough bird. Young man, you"re off to a grand start--a charge of a.s.sault on an officer the very day they turn you out of jail."
Larry smiled. "Gavegan is a dirty one, but he"ll make no charge of a.s.sault. He claims to be heavy-weight champion boxer of the Police Department. Put a fine crimp in his reputation, wouldn"t it, if he admitted in public that he"d been knocked out by a fellow, bare-handed, supposed to be weak from prison life, forty pounds lighter. He"d get the grand razoo all along the line. Oh, Gavegan will never let out a peep."
"He"ll square things in some other way," said Hunt.
"I suppose he"ll try," Larry responded carelessly. "Where"s the first-aid room?"
Hunt showed him through the curtains. When he came out, Hunt, Maggie, and the d.u.c.h.ess were all engaged in getting the dinner upon the table.
Additional help would only be interference, so Larry"s eyes wandered casually to the canvases standing in the shadows against the walls.
"Mr. Hunt," he remarked, "you seem to have earned a very real reputation of its sort in the neighborhood. Old Isaac downstairs told me you were crazy--said they called you "Nuts"--said you were the worst painter that ever happened."
"Yeh, that"s what they say," agreed Hunt.
"They certainly are awful, Larry," put in Maggie, coming to his side.
"Father thinks they are jokes, and father certainly knows pictures. Just look at a few of them."
"Yeh, look at "em and have a good laugh," invited Hunt.
Larry carried the portrait of the d.u.c.h.ess to beneath the swinging electric bulb and examined it closely. Maggie, at his shoulder, waited for his mirth; and Hunt regarded him with a sidelong gaze. But Larry did not laugh. He silently returned the picture, and then examined the portrait of Old Jimmie--then of Maggie--then of the Italian madonna, throned on her curbstone. He replaced this last and crossed swiftly to Hunt. Maggie watched this move in amazement.
Larry faced the big painter. His figure was tense, his features hard with suspicion. That moment one could understand why he was sometimes called "Terrible Larry"; just then he looked a devastating explosion that was still unexploded.
"What"s your game down here, Hunt?" he demanded harshly.
"My game?" repeated the big painter. "I don"t get you."
"Yes, you do! You"re down here posing as a b.o.o.b who smears up canvases!"
"What"s wrong with that?"
"Only this: those are not crazy daubs. They"re real pictures!"
"Eh!" exclaimed Hunt. Maggie stared in bewilderment at the two men.
Hunt spoke again. "What the d.i.c.kens do you know about pictures? Old Jimmie, who"s said to be a shark, thinks all these things are just comics."
"Jimmie only thinks a picture"s good after a thousand press-agents have said it"s good," Larry returned. "I studied at the Academy of Design for two years, till I learned I could never paint. But I know pictures."
"And you think mine are good?"
"Not in the popular manner--they"re too original. But they"re great. And you"re a great painter. And I want to know--"
"Hurray!" shouted Hunt, and flung an enthusiastic arm about Larry, and began to pound his back. "Oh, boy! Oh, boy!"
Larry wrenched himself free. "Cut that out. Then you admit you"re a great painter?"
"Of course I"m a great painter!" shouted Hunt. "Who should know it better than I do?"
"Then what"s a great painter doing down here? What"s the game you"re trying to put over, posing as--"