Children of the Whirlwind - Leroy Scott (read aloud .TXT) 📗

of Dick?"

"Dick's the easiest kind of fish for two such smooth men as Barney and Old Jimmie when they've got a clever, good-looking girl as bait, and when they know how to use her. He's generous, easily impressed, thinks he is a wise man of the world and is really very gullible."

"Have they got him hooked?"

"Hard and fast. It won't be his fault if they don't land him."

The painter gazed at Larry with a hard look. Then he demanded abruptly:

"Show Miss Sherwood that picture of Maggie I painted?"

"No. I had my reasons."

"What you going to do with it?"

"Keep it, and pay you your top price for it when I've got the money."

"H'm! Told Miss Sherwood what's doing about Dick?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I thought of doing it, then I decided against it. For the same reason I just gave you - that it might lead to exposure, and that exposure would defeat my plans."

"You seem to be forgetting that your plan leaves Dick in danger. Dick deserves some consideration."

"And I'm giving it to him," argued Larry. "I'm thinking of him as much as of Maggie. Or almost as much. His sister and friends have pulled him out of a lot of scrapes. He's not a bit wiser or better for that kind of help. And it's not going to do him any good whatever to have some one step in and take care of him again. He's been a good friend to me, but he's a dear fool. I want to handle this so he'll get a jolt that will waken him up - make him take his responsibilities more seriously - make him able to take care of himself."

"Huh!" grunted Hunt. "You've certainly picked out a few man-sized jobs for yourself: to make a success of the straight life for yourself - to come out ahead of the police and your old pals - to make Maggie love the Ten Commandments - to put me across - to make Dick into a level- headed citizen. Any other little item you'd like to take on?"

Larry ignored the irony of the question. "Some of those things I'm going to do," he said confidently. "And any I see I'm going to fail in, I'll get warning to the people involved. But to come back to your promise: are you willing to give your promise now that you know all the facts?"

Hunt pulled for a long moment at his pipe. Then he said almost gruffly:

"I guess you've guessed that Isabel Sherwood is about the most important person in the world to me?"

That was the nearest Hunt had ever come to telling that he loved Miss Sherwood. Larry nodded.

"I'm in bad there already. Suppose your foot slips and everything about Dick goes wrong. What'll be my situation when she learns I've known all along and have just stood by quietly and let things happen? See what I'll be letting myself in for?"

"I do," said Larry, his spirits sinking. "And of course I can understand your decision not to give your promise."

"Who said I wouldn't give my promise?" demanded Hunt. "Of course I give my promise! All I said was that the weather bureau of my bad toe predicts that there's likely to be a storm because of this - and I want you to use your brain, son, I want you to use your brain!"

He upreared his big, shag-haired figure and gripped Larry's hand. "You're all right, Larry - and here's wishing you luck! Now get to hell out of here before Gavegan and Casey drop in for a cup of tea, or your old friends begin target practice with their hip artillery. I want a little quiet in which to finish my packing.

"And say, son," he added, as he pushed Larry through the door, "don't fall dead at the sight of me when you see me next, for I'm likely to be walking around inside all the finery and vanity of Fifth Avenue."


CHAPTER XXI


Larry came down the stairway from Hunt's studio in a mood of high elation. Through Hunt's promise of cooperation he had at least made a start in his unformed plan regarding Maggie. Somehow, he'd work out and put across the rest of it.

Then Hunt's prediction of the trouble that might rise through his silence recurred to Larry. Indeed, that was a delicate situation! - containing all kinds of possible disasters for himself as well as for Hunt. He would have to be most watchful, most careful, or he would find himself entangled in worse circumstances than at present.

As he came down into the little back room, his grandmother was sitting over her interminable accounts, each of which represented a little profit to herself, some a little relief to many, some a tragedy to a few; and many of which were in code, for these represented transactions of a character which no pawnshop, particularly one reputed to be a fence, wishes ever to have understood by those presumptive busy-bodies, the police. When Larry had first entered, she had merely given him an unsurprised "good-evening" and permitted him to pass on. But now, as he told her good-night and turned to leave, she said in her thin, monotonous voice:

"Sit down for a minute, Larry. I want to talk to you."

Larry obeyed. "Yes, grandmother."

But the Duchess did not at once speak. She held her red-rimmed, unblinking eyes on him steadily. Larry waited patiently. Though she was so composed, so self-contained, Larry knew her well enough to know that what was passing in her mind was something of deep importance, at least to her.

At length she spoke. "You saw Maggie that night you hurried away from here?"

"Yes, grandmother. Have you heard from her since the? - or from Barney or Old Jimmie?"

The Duchess shook her head. "Do you mind telling me what happened that night - and what Maggie's doing?"

Larry told her of the scene in Maggie's suite at the Grantham, told of the plan in which Maggie was involved and of his own added predicament. This last the Duchess seemingly ignored.

"Just about what I supposed she was doing," she said. "And you tried again to get her to give it up?"

"Yes."

"And she refused?"

"Yes." And he added: "Refused more emphatically than before."

The Duchess studied him a long moment. Then: "You're not trying to make her give that up just because you think she's worth saving. You like her a lot, Larry?"

"I love her," Larry admitted.

"I'm sorry about that, Larry." There was real emotion in the old voice now. "I've told you that you're all I've got left. And now that you've at last started right, I want everything to go right with you. Everything! And Maggie will never help things go right with you. Your love for her can only mean misery and misfortune. You can't change her."

Larry came out with the questions he had asked himself so frequently these last days. "But why did her manner change so when she heard Barney and the others? Why did she help me escape?"

"That was because, deep down, she really loves you. That's the worst part of it: you both love each other." The Duchess slowly nodded her head. "You both love each other. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't care what you tried to do. But I tell you again you can't change her. She's too sure of herself. She'll always try to make you go her way - and if you don't, you'll never get a smile from her. And because you love each other, I'm afraid you'll give in and go her way. That's what I'm afraid of. Won't you just cut her out of your life, Larry?"

It had been a prodigiously long speech for the Duchess. And Larry realized that the emotion behind it was a thousand times what showed in the thin voice of the bent, gestureless figure.

"For your sake I'm sorry, grandmother. But I can't."

"Then it's only fair to tell you, Larry," she said in a more composed tone which expressed a finality of decision, "that if there's ever anything I can do to stop this, I'll do it. For she's bad for you - what with her stiff spirit - and the ideas Old Jimmie has put into her - and the way Old Jimmie has brought her up. I'll stop things if I can."

Larry made no reply. The Duchess continued looking at him steadily for a long space. He knew she was thinking; and he was wondering what was passing through that shrewd old brain, when she remarked:

"By the way, Larry, I just remembered what you told me of that old Sing Sing friend - Joe Ellison. Have you heard from him recently?"

"He's out, and he's working where I am."

"Yes? What's he doing?"

"He's working there as a gardener."

Again she was silent a space, her sunken eyes steady With thought. Then she said:

"From the time he was twenty till he was thirty I knew Joe Ellison well - better than I've ever told you. He knew your mother when she was a girl, Larry. I wish you'd ask him to come in to see me. As soon as he can manage it."

Larry promised. His grandmother said no more about Maggie, and presently Larry bade her good-night and made his cautious way, ever on the lookout for danger, to where he had left his roadster, and thence safely out to Cedar Crest. But the Duchess sat for hours exactly as he had left her, her accounts unheeded, thinking, thinking, thinking over an utterly impossible possibility that had first presented itself faintly to her several days before. She did not see how the thing could be; and yet somehow it might be, for many a strange thing did happen in this border world where for so long she had lived. When finally she went to bed she slept little; her busy conjectures would not permit sleep. And though the next day she went about her shop seemingly as usual, she was still thinking.

That night Joe Ellison came. They met as though they had last seen each other but yesterday.

"Good-evening, Joe."

"Glad to see you, Duchess."

She held out to him a box of the best cigars, which she had bought against his coming, for she had remembered Joe Ellison's once fastidious taste regarding tobacco. He lit one, and they fell into the easy silence of old friends, taking up their friendship exactly where it had been broken off. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison might have been her son-in-law but for her own firm attitude. He had known her daughter very much better than her words to Larry the previous evening had indicated. Not only had Joe known her while a girl down here, but much later he had learned in what convent she was going to school and there had been surreptitious love-making despite convent rules and boundaries - till the Duchess had learned what was going on. She had had a square out-and-out talk with Joe; the romance had suddenly ended; and later Larry's mother had married elsewhere. But the snuffed-out romance had made no difference in the friendship between the Duchess and Joe; each had recognized the other as square, as that word was understood in their border world.

To Joe Ellison the Duchess was changed but little