Children of the Whirlwind
not going to go straight. You're going to string along with Barney and
Old Jimmie and the rest of the bunch--we'll protect you--and you're
going to slip us tips when something big is about to be pulled off.”
Larry, experienced with police methods though he was, could hardly
believe this thing which was being proposed to him, Larry Brainard. But
he controlled himself.
“If I get you, Chief, you are suggesting that I become a police stool?”
“Exactly. We'll never tip your hand. And any little thing you pull off
on your own we'll not bother you about. And, besides, we'll slip you a
little dough regular on the quiet.”
“And all you want me to do in exchange,” Larry asked quietly, “is to
hand up my pals?”
“That's all.”
Larry found it required his all of strength to control himself; but he
did.
“There are only three small objections to your proposition, Chief.”
“Yes?”
“The first is, I shall not be a stool.”
“What's that?”
“And the second is, I wouldn't squeal on a pal to you even if I were a
crook. And the third is what I said in the beginning: I'm not going to
be a crook.”
Barlow's squat, powerful figure arose menacingly. Casey also stood up.
“I tell you you ARE going to be a crook!” Barlow's big fist crashed down
on his desk in a tremendous exclamation point. “And you're going to work
for me exactly as I tell you!”
“I have already given you my final word,” said Larry.
“You--you--” Barlow almost choked at this quiet defiance. His face
turned red, his breath came in a fluttering snarl, his powerful
shoulders hunched up as if he were about to strike. But he held back his
physical blows.
“That's your ultimatum?”
“If you care to call it so--yes.”
“Then here's mine! I told you I was holding back my high cards. Either
you do as I say, and work with Gavegan and Casey, or you'll not be able
to hold a job in New York! My men will see to that. And here's another
high card. You do as I've said, or I'll hang some charge on you, one
that'll stick, and back up the river you'll go for another stretch!
There's an ultimatum for you to think about!”
It certainly was. Larry gazed into the harsh, glaring face, set in
fierce determination. He knew that Barlow, as part of his policy, loved
to break down the spirit of criminals; and he knew that nothing so
roused Barlow as opposition from a man he considered in his power. Close
beside the Chief he saw the gloating, malignant face of Gavegan; Casey,
who had been restless since the beginning of the scene, had moved to the
window and was gazing down into Center Street.
For a moment Larry did not reply. Barlow mistook Larry's silence for
wavering, or the beginning of an inclination to yield.
“You turn that over in your noodle,” Barlow drove on. “You're going
to go crooked, anyhow, so you might as well go crooked in the only way
that's safe for you. I'm going to have Gavegan and Casey watch you, and
if in the next few days you don't begin to string along with Barney and
Old Jimmie and that bunch, and if you don't get me word that your answer
to my proposition is 'yes,' hell's going to fall on you! Now get out of
here!”
Larry got out. He was liquid lava of rage inside; but he had had enough
to do with police power to know that it would help him not at all to
permit an eruption against a police official while he was in the very
heart of the police stronghold.
He walked back toward his own street in a fury, beneath which was
subconsciously an element of uneasiness: an uneasiness which would have
been instantly roused to caution had he known that Barney Palmer had
this hour and more been following him in a taxicab, and that across the
street from the car's window Barney's sharp face had watched him enter
Police Headquarters and had watched him emerge.
Home reached, Larry briefly recounted his experience at Headquarters to
Hunt and the Duchess. The painter whistled; the Duchess blinked and said
nothing at all.
“Maggie was more right than she knew when she first said you were facing
a tough proposition!” exclaimed Hunt. “Believe me, young fellow, you're
certainly up against it!”
“Can you beat it for irony!” said Larry, pacing the floor. “A man wants
to go straight. His pals ask him to be a crook, and are sore because
he won't be a crook. The police ask him to be a crook, and threaten him
because he doesn't want to be a crook. Some situation!”
“Some situation!” repeated Hunt. “What're you going to do?”
“Do?” Larry halted, his face set with defiant determination. “I'm going
to keep on doing exactly what I've been doing! And they can all go to
hell!”
CHAPTER X
For several days nothing seemed to be happening, though Larry had a
sense that unknown forces were gathering on distant isothermal lines
and bad weather was bearing down upon him. During these days, trying
to ignore that formless trouble, he gave himself with a most rigid
determination to his new routine--the routine which he counted on to
help him into the way of great things.
Every day he saw Maggie; sometimes he was in her company for an hour or
more. He had the natural hunger of a young man to talk to a young woman;
and, moreover, it is a severe strain for a man to be living under the
same roof with the girl he loves and not to be on terms of friendship
with her. But Maggie maintained her aloofness. She spoke only when she
was pressed into it, and her speech was usually no more than a “yes” or
a “no,” or a flashing phrase of disdain.
At times Larry had the feeling that, for all her repression, Maggie
would have been glad to be more free with him. And he knew enough of
human nature not to be too disheartened by her attitude. Had he been
a nonentity to her, she would have ignored him. Her very insults were
proof that he was a positive personality with real significance in her
life. And so he counseled himself to have patience and await a thawing
or an awaking. Besides, he kept repeating to himself, there would
be small chance of effecting a conversion in this militant young
orthodoxist of cynicism until he had proved the soundness of contrary
views by his own established success.
And thus the days drifted by. But on the fifth day after his interview
with Barlow things began to happen. First of all, he noticed in a
morning paper that Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt, members of his old
outfit and suggested by Old Jimmie as participants in his proposed new
enterprise, had just been arrested by Gavegan and Casey on the charge of
alleged connection with the sale of fraudulent mining stock.
Second, on his return at the end of the afternoon, he saw standing
before the house a taxicab with a trunk beside the chauffeur. In the
musty museum of a room behind the pawnshop he found Hunt and the Duchess
and Old Jimmie and Barney; and also Maggie, coming down the stairway,
hat and coat on and carrying a suitcase. A sharp pain throbbed through
him as he recognized the significance of Maggie's hat and coat and
baggage.
“Maggie--you're going away?” he exclaimed.
“Yes.”
She had paused at the foot of the stairway, and at sight of him had gone
a little pale and wide-eyed. But in an instant she had recovered her
accustomed flair; there came a proud lift to her head, a flash of scorn
into her dark eyes.
“At last I'm leaving this street for good,” she said. “I told you that
some day I was going out into the world and do big things. The time's
come--I'm graduated--I'm going to begin real work. And I'm going to
succeed--you see!”
“Maggie!” he breathed. Then impulsively he started toward her
authoritatively. “Maggie, I'm not going to let you do anything of the
sort!”
But swiftly Barney had stepped in between them, Old Jimmie just behind
him.
“Keep out of this!” Barney snapped at Larry, a reddish blaze in his
eyes. “Maggie's going away and you can't stop her. D'you think her
father is going to let her stay down here any longer, where you can
spout your preaching at her!--and you all the time a stool and a
squealer!”
“What's that?” cried Larry.
“I called you a stool!” repeated the malignantly exultant Barney, alert
for any move on the part of the suddenly tensed Larry. “And you are
a stool! Didn't I see you myself go into Headquarters with Casey and
Gavegan where you sold yourself to Chief Barlow!”
“Why, you damned--”
Even before he spoke Larry launched a furious swing straight from the
hip at Barney's twisted face. But Barney had been expecting exactly
that, and was even the quicker. He caught Larry's wrist before it was
fairly started, and thrust a dull-hued automatic into Larry's stomach.
“Behave; damn you,” gritted Barney, “or I'll blow your damned guts out!
No--go ahead and try to hit me. I'd like nothing better than to kill
you, you rat, and have a good plea of self-defense!”
Larry let his hands unclench and fall to his sides. “You've got the drop
on me, Barney--but you're a liar.”
“You bet I got the drop on you! And not only with my gun. I've got it
on you about being a stool. Everybody knows you are a stool. And what's
more, they know you are a squealer!”
“A squealer!” Larry stiffened again.
“A stool and a squealer!” Barney fairly hurled at Larry these two most
despised epithets of his world. “You've done your job swell as a stool,
and squealed on Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt and turned them up for
the police!”
“You believe I had anything to do with their arrest?” exclaimed Larry.
Barney laughed in his derision.
“Of course we believe it,” put in Old Jimmie, his seamed, cunning face
now ruthlessly hard. “And what's more, we know it!”
“And what's still more,” Barney taunted, “Maggie believes it, too!”
Larry turned to Maggie. Her face was now drawn, with staring eyes.
“Maggie--do you believe it?” he demanded.
For a moment she neither spoke nor moved. Then slowly she nodded.
“But, Maggie,” he protested, “I didn't do it! Barlow did ask me to be
a stool, but I turned him down! Aside from that, I know no more of this
than you do!”
“Of course you'd deny it--we were waiting for that,” sneered Barney.
“Jimmie, we've wasted enough time here. Take Maggie's bag and let's be
moving on.”
Old Jimmie picked up Maggie's suitcase, and slipping a hand through her
arm led her across the room. She did not even say good-bye to Hunt or
the Duchess, or even glance at them; but went out silently, her drawn,
staring look on Larry alone.
Barney backed after them, his automatic still held in readiness. “I'm
letting you down damned easy, Brainard,” he said, hate glittering in his
eyes. “But there's some who won't be so nice!”
With that he closed the door. Until that moment both Hunt and the
Duchess had said nothing. Now the Duchess spoke up:
“I'm glad they've taken Maggie away, Larry. I've seen the way you've
come to feel about her, and she's not the right sort for you.”
But Larry was still too dazed by the way in which Maggie had walked out
of his life to make any response.
“But there's a lot in what Barney said about there being some who
wouldn't be easy on you,” continued the Duchess. “That word had been
brought me before Barney showed up. So I had this ready for you.”
From a slit pocket in her baggy skirt the Duchess drew out a pistol and
handed it to Larry.
“What's this for?” Larry asked.
“I was told that word had gone out to the Ginger Buck Gang to get you,”
answered the Duchess. “Barney has some secret connection with the Ginger
Bucks. His saying that you were a stool and a squealer is not the
only thing he's got against you; he's jealous of you on account of
everything--especially Maggie. So you'll need that gun.”
“What's this I've fallen into the middle of?” exclaimed Hunt. “A
Kentucky feud?”
“It's very easy to understand when you know the code,” Larry explained