"You did that?" For the first time Maggie showed what seemed to be a live interest. "How?"
"How? You"ll say it was clever when you learn how. And you"ll say that I"m the man you want on that count of being able to put over a situation so that no one will ever guess I"m the man who did it. You"ll admit that putting Larry Brainard out of business, so he"d stay out, was certainly a stiff job--for though I don"t like him, I admit that Larry is one wise bird. One thing I did was to suggest to Barlow that he force Larry to become a police stool. I knew Larry would refuse, and I figured out everything else exactly as it has happened. I ask you, wasn"t that putting something clever over?"
"It certainly was clever!" admired Maggie.
"Wait! That"s only half. To finish Larry off so that he wouldn"t have a chance I had to finish him off not only with the cops, but also with his pals. So I tipped off Barlow to the game Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt were pulling and--"
"Then Larry Brainard really didn"t do that?"
"No; I did it! Listen--there"s some more to it. I spread the word, so that it seemed to be a leak from the Police Department, that it was Larry who had squealed on Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt. Did his old pals start out to get Larry? Well, now, did they! If I do say it myself, that was smooth work!"
"It was wonderful!" agreed Maggie.
"And there"s still more, Maggie! You remember that charge of stick-up and attempted murder of a Chicago guy that the police are trying to land Larry on? I put that over! I"m the party that was messed up in that. I was trying to put over a neat little job all on my own; but something went wrong just as I thought I was cleaning out the sucker, and I had to be rough with that Chicago guy in order to make a get-away from him. I beat it straight to Barlow, and said that right here was the chance to fasten something on Larry. Barlow took my tip. My foot may have slipped on the original job, but my bean certainly did act quick, and you"ve got to admit I turned an apparent failure into something bigger than success would have been. And that"s certainly traveling!"
"It certainly is!"
"And now, Maggie "--Barney pressed her eagerly--"I"ve shown you I"m just the sort you said a man had to be for you to tie up with him. I"ve shown you I can guarantee you police protection. And I"ve shown you I"m able to put over clever situations without any one ever guessing I"m the party who put "em over. I fit all your specifications! How about our settling right now to join up some place--Toronto"s the best bet--say three days after we make our get-away after to-night"s clean-up? Let"s be quick about this, Maggie--before Old Jimmie comes in. He"s due any minute now!"
"Isn"t that him at the door now?" breathed Maggie.
Both waited intently for a moment. But though she pretended so, Maggie"s interest was not upon the outer door. Her attention was fixed, as it had been with sickening fear this last minute, upon that half-inch crack in the closet door behind Barney. Why had she, in her dismayed urgence, allowed Larry to possess himself of that closet key?--when her plan had been to keep Hannigan as well as Barlow forcibly behind the scenes until she had acted out her play? She now hoped almost against hope that Hannigan would not burst forth and ruin what was yet to come. Since that door unluckily had to be unlocked, her one chance was given her by the presence of Larry. Perhaps Larry could perceive the larger things she was striving for, and in some way restrain Hannigan.
These thoughts were but an instant in pa.s.sing through her brain.
Barney"s eyes came back from the outer door to her face. "That"s not Old Jimmie yet."
"No," her lips said. But her brain was saying, since the crack still remained a half-inch crack, "Larry understands--he"s holding back Red Hannigan!"
Barney returned swiftly to his charge. "How about Toronto, Maggie--say exactly seventy-two hours from now--the Royal Brunswick Hotel?"
Maggie realized she could no longer put him off if she were to keep him unsuspicious for the next hour. Besides, in her desperate disillusionment concerning herself, she did not care what happened to her, or what people might think of her, if only she could keep this play going till its final moment.
"Yes," she said--"if we each feel the same way toward each other when this evening"s ended."
"Maggie!" he cried. "Maggie!" This time, when he exultantly caught at her hand, she dared not refuse it to him. And she felt an additional loathing for Barney"s caress because she knew that Larry was a witness to it.
Indeed, it was difficult for Larry, at the sight of Maggie"s hand in Barney"s too eager palms, to hold himself in check; and to do this in addition to holding in check the slight, quivering Red Hannigan, whose collar and whose right wrist he had been gripping these last three minutes. For Larry, as Maggie had hoped, had dimly apprehended something of Maggie"s plan, and he felt himself bound by the promise she had extracted from him, to let her go through with whatever she had under way; though he had no conception of her plan"s extent, and could, of course, not know of the intention of her overwrought mind to give her plan its final touch in what amounted to her own self-destruction, and in her vanishing utterly out of the knowledge of all who knew her.
Another minute pa.s.sed; then Larry heard three peculiar rings of the bell of the outer door--an obvious signal. Maggie answered the summons, and Larry saw Old Jimmie enter. There followed a rapid and compact conference between the three, the substance of which was the telling of Old Jimmie of the developments against d.i.c.k Sherwood which Maggie had a little earlier recited to Barney, together with instructions to Old Jimmie concerning his new role as Maggie"s guardian. It seemed to Larry that he caught signs of uneasiness in Jimmie, but to all the older man nodded his head.
Presently there was a loud ring. "That"s d.i.c.k!" exclaimed Barney in a whisper. "And mighty eager, too--shows that by being ahead of the time you set! Let him in, Maggie."
Maggie was startled by the ring, though she did not show it. She thought rapidly. She had definitely asked d.i.c.k to telephone before coming. Why hadn"t he telephoned? Perhaps something had happened to prevent it, or perhaps an idea had come to him by which their plan could be bettered without a telephone message. In either case, she and d.i.c.k might have to improvise and deftly catch cues tossed to each other, as experienced actors sometimes do without the audience ever knowing that a hiatus in the play has been skillfully covered.
Maggie stood up. "You both understand what you"re to do?"
Both whispered "yes." Larry watched Maggie start across the room, his whole figure quivering with suspense as to what was going to happen when d.i.c.k entered. He was quite sure there was more here than appeared upon the surface, quite sure that Maggie did not intend that the business with d.i.c.k should work out as she had outlined. What could Maggie possibly be up to? he asked himself in feverish wonderment, and could find no answer. For of course Larry had no knowledge of that most important fact: that Maggie had actually made a confession to d.i.c.k--not the fraudulent confession she had told Barney of--but an honest and complete confession, and that in consequence she and d.i.c.k were working in cooperation.
From his crack Larry could not quite see the outer door. But after she opened the door he saw Maggie fall back with an inarticulate cry, her face suddenly blanched with astounded fright. And then Larry experienced one of the greatest surprises of his life--a surprise so unnerving that he almost loosed his hold upon Red Hannigan. For instead of d.i.c.k there walked into the room the tall, white-haired figure of Joe Ellison, and Joe"s lean, prison-blanched face was aquiver with a devastating purpose.
How in the name of G.o.d had Joe come to be here?--and what did that terrible look portend?
But Larry"s surprise was but an unperturbing emotion compared to the effect of her father"s appearance, with his terrible face, upon Maggie.
Life seemed suddenly to go out of her. She realized that the clever play which she had constructed so rapidly, and upon which she had counted to clear the tangle for which she was in part responsible, and to bring her back in time as the seeming fulfillment of the dream of a happy and undisillusioned father--she realized that her poor, brilliant play had come to an instant end before it was fairly started, and that the control of events had pa.s.sed into other hands.
CHAPTER x.x.xV
At the entrance of Joe Ellison instead of the expected d.i.c.k, Barney and Old Jimmie had sprung up from the table in amazement. Joe strode past Maggie, hardly heeding his daughter, and faced the two men.
"I guess you know me, Jimmie Carlisle!" said Joe with a terrifying restraint of tone. "The pal I trusted--the pal I turned everything over to--the pal who double-crossed me in every way!"
"Joe Ellison!" gasped Jimmie, suddenly as ghastly as a dead man. "I--I didn"t know you were out."
"I"m out, all right. But I"ll probably go in again for what I"m going to do to you! And you there"--turning on Barney--"you"re got up enough like a professional dancer to be the Barney Palmer I"ve heard of!"
"What business is it of yours who I am?" Barney tried to bl.u.s.ter.
"Perhaps you won"t mind introducing yourself."
"I"m the man who"s going to settle with you and Old Jimmie Carlisle! Is that introduction enough. If not, then I"m Joe Ellison, the father of this girl here you call Maggie Carlisle and Maggie Cameron, that you two have made into a crook."
"Your daughter!" exclaimed Barney in stupefaction. "Why, she"s Jimmie Carlisle"s--"
"He"s always pa.s.sed her off as such; that much I"ve learned. Speak up, Jimmie Carlisle! Whose daughter is this girl you"ve turned into a crook?"
"Your daughter, Joe," stammered Old Jimmie. "But about my making her into a crook--you"re--you"re all wrong there."
"So she"s not a crook, and you didn"t make her one?" demanded Joe with the calm of unexploded dynamite whose fuse is sputtering. "I left you about twelve or fifteen hundred a year to bring her up on--as a decent, respectable girl. That"s twenty-five or thirty a week. If she"s not a crook, how can she on twenty-five a week have all the swell clothes I"ve seen her in, and be living in a suite like this that costs from twenty-five to fifty a day? And if she isn"t a crook, why is she mixed up with two such crooks as you? And if she isn"t a crook, why is she in a game to trim young d.i.c.k Sherwood?"
The two men started and wilted at these driving questions. "But--but, Joe," stammered Old Jimmie, "you"ve gone out of your head. She"s not in any such game. She never even heard of any d.i.c.k Sherwood."
"Cut out your lies, Jimmie Carlisle!" Joe ordered harshly. "We"ve got something more to do here, the four of us, than to waste any time on lies. And just to prove to you that your lies will be wasted, I"ll lay all my cards face up on the table. Since I got out I"ve been working for the Sherwoods. Larry Brainard was working there before me, and got me my job. I"ve seen this girl here--my daughter that you"ve made into a crook--out there twice. d.i.c.k Sherwood was supposed to be in love with her. At the end of this afternoon some officers came to the Sherwoods"
and arrested Larry Brainard. I was working outside, overheard what was happening, and crept up on the porch. Officer Gavegan, who was in charge, found a painting among Larry Brainard"s things. Miss Sherwood said that it was a picture of Miss Maggie Cameron who had been visiting there, and I could see that it was. Officer Gavegan said it was a picture of Maggie Carlisle, daughter of Jimmie Carlisle, and that she was a crook. Larry Brainard, cornered, had to admit that Gavegan was right. I guessed at once who Maggie Carlisle was, since she was just the age my girl would have been and since you never had any children.
And that"s how, Jimmie Carlisle, standing there outside the window,"
concluded the terrible voice of Joe Ellison, "I learned for the first time that the baby I"d trusted with you to be brought up straight, and that I believed was now happy somewhere as a nice, decent girl, you had really brought up as your own daughter and trained to be a crook!"
Old Jimmie shrank back from Joe"s blazing eyes; his mouth opened spasmodically, but no words came therefrom. There was stupendous silence in the room. Within the closet, Larry now understood that low, strange sound he had heard on the Sherwoods" porch and which Gavegan and Hunt had investigated. It had been the suppressed cry of Joe Ellison when he had learned the truth--the difference between his dreams and the reality. He could not imagine what that moment had been to Joe: the swift, unbelievable knowledge that had seemed to be tearing his very being apart.
Larry had an impulse to step out to Joe"s side. But just as a little earlier he had felt the scene had belonged to Maggie, he now felt that this situation, the greatest in Joe"s life, belonged definitely to Joe, was almost sacredly Joe"s own property. Also he felt that he was about to learn many things which had puzzled him. Therefore he held himself back, at the same time keeping his hold upon Red Hannigan.
During this moment of silence, while Larry was wondering what was going to happen, his eyes also took in the figure of Maggie, all her powers of action and expression still paralyzed by appalling consternation. He understood, at least to a degree, what she was going through. He knew this much of her plan: that she had intended to cut loose in some way from Barney and Old Jimmie, and that she had intended that her father should continue to cherish the dream that had been his happiness for so long. And now her father had come upon her in the company of Barney and Old Jimmie and in a situation whose every superficial circ.u.mstance was such as to make him believe the worst of her!
Joe turned on the smartly dressed Barney. "I"ll take you first, you imitation swell, because I"m saving Jimmie Carlisle to the last!" went on Joe"s crunching voice. "I"m going to twist your d.a.m.ned neck for what you"ve helped do to my girl, but if you want to say anything first, say it."
Barney"s response was a swift movement of his right hand toward his left armpit. But Barney Palmer, like almost all his kind, was a very indifferent gunman; and he had no knowledge of the reputation for masterful quickness that had been Joe Ellison"s twenty years earlier.
Before his compact automatic was fairly out of its holster beneath his armpit, it was in Joe Ellison"s hands.