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

left her, his rage at Barney's treachery and his impetuous desire to snatch Maggie away from her present influences, so stormed within him that his usually cautious judgment was blown away and recklessness swept like a gale into control of him.

When he called up the Grantham a second time, at nine o'clock, Maggie's voice came to him:

"Hello. Who this, please?"

"Mr. Brandon."

He heard a stilted "Oh!" at the other end of the line "I'm coming right up to see you," he said.

"I - I don't think you - "

"I'll be there in then minutes," Larry interrupted the startled voice and hung up.

He counted that Maggie, after his sparing her at Cedar Crest, would receive him and treat him at least no worse than an enemy with whom there was a half hour's truce. Sure enough, when he rang the bell of her suite, Maggie herself admitted him to her sitting-room. She was taut and pale, her look neither friendly nor unfriendly.

"Don't you know the risk you're running," she whispered when the door was closed - "coming here like this, in the open?"

"The time has come for risks, Maggie," he announced.

"But you were safe enough where you were. Why take such risks?"

"For your sake."

"My sake?"

"To take you away from these people you're tied up with. Take you away now."

At an earlier time this would have been a fuse to a detonation of defiance from her. But now she said nothing at all, and that was something.

"Since I've come out into the open, everything's going to be in the open. Listen, Maggie!" The impulse had suddenly come upon him, since his plan to awaken Maggie by her psychological reactions had apparently failed, to tell her everything. "Listen, Maggie! I'm going to lay all my cards on the table, and show you every card I've played. You were invited to come out to Cedar Crest because I schemed to have you come. And the reason I schemed to have you invited was, I reasoned that being received in such a frank, generous, unsuspecting way, by a woman like Miss Sherwood, would make you sick of what you were doing and you would drop it of your own accord. But it seems I reasoned wrong."

"So - you were behind that!" she breathed.

"I was. Though I couldn't have done it if Dick Sherwood hadn't been honestly infatuated with you. But now I'm through with working under cover, through with indirect methods. From now on every play's in the open, and it's straight to the point with everything. So get ready. I'm going to take you away from Barney and Old Jimmie."

The mention of these two names had a swift and magical effect upon her. But instead of arousing belligerency, they aroused an almost frantic agitation.

"You must leave at once, Larry. Barney and my father were here before dinner, and they've just telephoned they were coming back!"

"Coming back! That's the best argument you could make for my staying!"

"But, Larry - they both have keys, and Barney always carries a gun!"

"I stay here, unless you leave with me. Listen to some more, Maggie. I laid all the cards on the table. Do you know the kind of people you're tied up with? I'll not say anything about your father, for I guess you know all there is to know. But Barney Palmer! He's the lowest kind of crook that breathes. There's been a lot of talk about squealers and police stools. Well, the big squealer, the big stool, is Barney Palmer!"

"I don't believe it!" she cried involuntarily.

"It's true! I've got it straight. Barney wanted to smash me, because I'd made up my mind to quit the old game and because he wanted to get me out of his way with you. So he framed it up so that I appeared to be a squealer, and started the gangmen after me. And he put Barlow up to the idea of forcing me to be a stool, and then framing me when I refused. It was Barney who fixed things so I had to go to jail, or be shot up, or run away. It was Barney Palmer who squealed on Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt, and who's been squealing on his other pals. And that's the sort you're stringing along with!"

She gazed at him in appalled half conviction. He remained silent to let his truth sink in.

They were standing so, face to face, when a key grated in the outer door of the little hallway as on the occasion of Larry's first visit here. And as on that occasion, Maggie sprang swiftly forward and shot home the bolt of the inner door. Then she turned and caught Larry's arm.

"It's Barney - I told you he was coming!" she whispered. "Oh, why didn't you go before? Come on!"

She tried to drag him toward her bedroom door, through which she had once helped him escape. But this time he was not to be moved.

"I stay right here," he said to her.

There was the sound of a futile effort to turn the lock of the inner door; then Barney's voice called out: "What's the matter, Maggie? Open the door."

Maggie, still clutching Larry's resisting arm, stood gasping in wide- eyed consternation.

"Open the door for them, Maggie," Larry whispered.

"I'll not do it!" she whispered back.

"Open it, or I will," he ordered.

Their gazes held a moment longer while Barney rattled at the lock. Then slowly, falteringly, her amazed eyes over her shoulder upon him, Maggie crossed and unlocked the door. Barney entered, Old Jimmie just bend him.

"I say, Maggie, what was the big idea in keeping us - " he was beginning in a grumbling tone, when he saw Larry just beyond her. His complaint broke off in mid-breath; he stopped short and his dark face twitched with his surprise.

"Larry Brainard!" he finally exclaimed. Old Jimmie, suddenly tense, blinked and said nothing.

"Hello, Barney; hello, Jimmie," Larry greeted his former allies, putting on an air of geniality. "Been a long time since we three met. Don't stand there in the door. Come right in."

Barney was keen enough to see, though Larry's attitude was careless and his tone light, that his eyes were bright and hard. Barney moved forward a couple of paces, alert for anything, and Old Jimmie followed. Maggie looked on at the three men, her girlish figure taut and hardly breathing.

"Didn't know you were in New York," said Barney.

"Well, here I am all right," returned Larry with his menacing cheerfulness.

By now Barney had recovered from his first surprise. He felt it time to assert his supremacy.

"How do you come to be here with Maggie?" he demanded abruptly.

"Happened to catch sight of her on the street to-day. Trailed her here to the Grantham, and to-night I just dropped in."

Barney's tone grew more authoritative, more ugly. "We told you long ago we were through with you. So why did you come here?"

"That's easy answered, Barney. The last time we were all together, you'd come to take Maggie away. This is that same scene reproduced - only this time I've come to take Maggie away."

"What's that?" snapped Barney.

Larry's voice threw off its assumed geniality, and became drivingly hard. "And to get Maggie to come, I've been telling her the kind of a bird you are, Barney Palmer! Oh, I've got the straight dope on you! I've been telling her how you framed me, and were able to frame me because you are Chief Barlow's stool."

Barney went as near white as it was possible for him to become, and his mouth sagged. "What - what - " he stammered.

"I've been telling her that you are the one who really squealed on Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt."

"You're a damned liar!" Barney burst out, and instantly from beneath his left arm he whipped an automatic which he thrust against Larry's stomach. "Take that back, damn you, or I'll blow you straight to hell!"

"Barney! - Larry!" interjected Maggie in sickened fright.

"This is nothing to worry over, Maggie," Larry said. He looked back at Barney. "Oh, I knew you would flash a gun on me at some stage of the game. But you're not going to shoot."

"You'll see, if you don't take that back!"

Larry realized that his hot blood had driven him into an enterprise of daring, in which only bluff and the playing of his highest cards could help him through.

"You don't think I was such a fool as to walk into this place without taking precautions," he said contemptuously. "You won't shoot, Barney, because since I knew I might meet you and you'd pull a gun, I had myself searched by two friends just before I came up here. They'll testify I was not armed. They know you, and know you so well that they'll be able to identify the thing in your hand as your gun. So no matter what Maggie and Jimmie may testify, the verdict will be cold- blooded murder and the electric chair will be your finish. And that's why I know you won't shoot. So you might as well put the gun away."

Barney neither spoke nor moved.

"I've called your bluff, Barney," Larry said sharply. "Put that gun away, or I'll take it from you!"

Barney's glare wavered. The pistol sank from its position. With a lightning-swift motion Larry wrenched it from Barney's hand.

"Guess I'd better have it, after all," he said, slipping it into a pocket. "Keep you out of temptation."

And then in a subdued voice that was steely with menace: "I'm too busy to attend to you now, Barney - but, by God, I'm going to square things with you for the dirt you've done me, and I'm going to show you up for a stool and a squealer!" He wheeled on Old Jimmie. "And the only reason I'll be easy with you, Jimmie Carlisle, is because you are Maggie's father - though you're the rottenest thing as a father God ever let breathe!"

Old Jimmie shrank slightly before Larry's glower, and his little eyes gleamed with the fear of a rat that is cornered. But he said nothing.

Larry turned his back upon the two men. "We're through with this bunch, Maggie. Put on a hat and a wrap, and let's go. We can send for your things."

"No you don't, Maggie," snarled Barney, before Maggie could speak.

Old Jimmie made his first positive motion since entering the room. He shifted quickly to Maggie's side and seized her arm.

"You're my daughter, and you stay with me!" he ordered. "I brought you up, and you do exactly what I tell you to! You're not going with Larry - he's lying about Barney. You stay with me!"

"Come on, let's go, Maggie," repeated Larry.

"You stay with me!" repeated Jimmie.

Thus ordered and appealed to, Maggie was areel with contradicting thoughts and impulses while the three men awaited her action. In fact she had no clear thought at all. She never knew later what determined her course at this bewildered moment: perhaps it was partly a continuance of her doubt of Larry, perhaps partly once more sheer momentum, perhaps her instinctive feeling that her place was with the man she believed to be her father.

"Yes, I'll stay with you," she said to Old