Children of the Whirlwind
as I understand you are, why, we're about the same size. Tell Judkins
what you want, and make him give you plenty. What time you got?”
“Just ten o'clock.”
“By heck--time a farmer was pulling on his overalls and going forth to
his dew-gemmed toil!”
“And time for me to be seeing your sister,” said Larry, rising.
“Come on. I'm a good seneschal, or major domo, or what you like--and
I'll usher you into her highness's presence.”
A moment later Larry was pushed through the library door and Dick
announced in solemn tone:
“Senorita--Mademoiselle--our serene, revered, and most high sister
Isabel, permit us to present our newest and most charming friend,
Captain Nemo.”
“Dick,” exclaimed Miss Sherwood, “get out of here and get yourself into
some clothes!”
“Listen to that!” complained Dick. “She still talks to me as though I
were her small brother. Next thing she'll be ordering me to wash behind
my ears!”
“Get out, and shut the door after you!”
The reply was Dick's stately exit and the sharp closing of the door.
“Has Dick been talking to you about himself?” asked Miss Sherwood.
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Larry gave the substance of the autobiography which Dick had
volunteered.
“Part of that is more than the truth, part less than the truth,” Miss
Sherwood remarked. “But this morning we were to have a real talk about
your affairs, and let's get to the subject.”
She had motioned him to a chair beside the quaint old desk, and they
were now sitting face to face. Isabel Sherwood looked as much the
finished patrician as on the evening before, and with that easy,
whimsical humor and the direct manner of the person who is sure of
herself; and in the sober, disillusioning daylight she had no less
of beauty than had seemed hers in the softer lighting of their first
meeting. The clear, fresh face with its violet-blue eyes was gazing at
him intently. Larry realized that she was looking into the very soul of
him, and he sat silent during this estimate which he recognized she had
the right to make.
“Mr. Hunt has written me the main facts about you, certainly the worst,”
she said finally. “You need tell me nothing further, if you prefer not
to do so; but it might be helpful if I knew more of the details.”
Larry felt that there was no information he was not willing to give this
clear-eyed, charming woman; and so he told her all that had happened
since his return from Sing Sing, including his falling in love with
Maggie, the nature of their conflict, her departure into the ways of her
ambition.
“You are certainly facing a lot of difficult propositions.” Miss
Sherwood checked them off on her fingers. “The police are after
you--your old friends are after you--you do not dare be caught. You
want to clear yourself--you want to make a business success--you want
to eradicate Maggie's present ambitions and remove her from her present
influences.”
“That is the correct total,” said Larry.
“Certainly a large total! Of them all, which is the most important
item?”
Larry considered. “Maggie,” he confessed. “But Maggie really includes
all the others. To have any influence with her, I must get out of the
power of the police, I must overcome her belief that I am a stool and
a squealer, and I must prove to her that I can make a success by going
straight.”
“Just so. And all these things you must do while a fugitive in hiding.”
“Exactly. Or else not do them.”
“H'm!... The most pressing thing, I judge, is to have a safe and
permanent place to hide, and to have work which may lead to an
opportunity to prove yourself a success.”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Hunt's O.K. on you would be sufficient, in any event, and he has
given that O.K.,” Miss Sherwood said in her even voice. “Besides, my own
judgment prompts me to believe in your truth and your sincerity. I have
been thinking the matter over since I saw you last night. I therefore
ask you to remain here, never leaving the apartment--”
“Miss Sherwood!” he ejaculated.
“And a little later, when we go out to our place on Long Island, you'll
have more freedom. For the present you will be, to the servants and any
other persons who may chance to come in, Mr. Brandon, a second cousin
staying with us; and your explanation for never venturing forth can be
that you are convalescing after an operation. Perhaps you can think of a
plan whereby later on you might occasionally leave the house without too
great risk to yourself.”
“Yes. The risk comes from the police, and from some of my old friends
and the gangsters they have enlisted. So long as they believe me in
New York, they'll all be on the lookout for me every moment. If they
believed me out of New York, they would all discontinue their vigilance.
If--if--But perhaps you would not care to do so much.”
“Go on.”
“Would you be willing to write a letter to some friend in Chicago,
requesting the friend to post an enclosed letter written by me?”
“Certainly.”
“My handwriting would be disguised--but a person who really knows my
writing would penetrate the attempted disguise and recognize it as mine.
My letter would be addressed to my grandmother requesting her to express
my recent purchase of forfeited pledges to me in Chicago. A clever
person reading the letter would be certain I was asking her to send me
my clothes.”
“What's the point to that?”
“One detail of the police's search for me will be to open secretly, with
the aid of the postal authorities, all mail addressed to my grandmother.
They will steam open this letter about my clothes, then seal it and let
it be delivered. But they will have learned that I have escaped them and
am in Chicago. They will drop the hunt here and telegraph the Chicago
police, And of course the news will leak through to my old friends, and
they'll also stop looking for me in New York.”
“I see.”
“And enclosed in another letter written by you, I'll send an order, also
to be posted in Chicago, to a good friend of mine asking him to call at
the express office, get my clothes, and hold them until I call or send
for them. When he goes and asks for the clothes, the Chicago police will
get him and find the order on him. They'll have no charge at all against
him, but they'll have further proof that I'm in Chicago or some place
in the Middle West. The effect will be definitely to transfer the search
from New York.”
“Yes, I see,” repeated Miss Sherwood. “Go ahead and do it; I'll
help you. But for the present you've got to remain right here in the
apartment, as I said. And later, when you think the letters have had
their effect, you must use the utmost caution.”
“Certainly,” agreed Larry.
“Now as to your making a start in business. I suspect that my affairs
are in a very bad shape. Things were left to my brother, as he told you.
I have a lot of papers, all kinds of accounts, which he has brought to
me and he's bringing me a great many more. I can't make head or tail
of them, and I think my brother is about as much befuddled as I am. I
believe only an expert can understand them. Mr. Hunt says you have
a very keen mind for such matters. I wish you'd take charge of these
papers, and try to straighten them out.”
“Miss Sherwood,” Larry said slowly, “you know my record and yet you risk
trusting me with your affairs?”
“Not that I wouldn't take the risk--but whatever there is to steal, some
one else has already stolen it, or will steal it. Your work will be to
discover thefts or mistakes, and to prevent thefts or mistakes if you
can. You see I am not placing any actual control over stealable property
in you--not yet.... Well, what do you say?”
“I can only say, Miss Sherwood, that you are more than good, and that I
am more than grateful, and that I shall do my best!”
Miss Sherwood regarded him thoughtfully for a long space. Then she said:
“I am going to place something further in your hands, for if you are as
clever as I think you are, and if life has taught you as much as I think
it has, I believe you can help me a lot. My brother Dick is wild and
reckless. I wish you'd look out for him and try to hold him in check
where you can. That is, if this isn't placing too great a duty on you.”
“That's not a duty--it's a compliment!”
“Then that will be all for the present. I'll see you again in an hour or
two, when I shall have some things ready to turn over to you.”
Back in his bedroom Larry walked exultantly to and fro. He had security!
And at last he had a chance--perhaps the chance he had been yearning for
through which he was ultimately to prove himself a success!...
He wondered yet more about Miss Sherwood. And again about her and Hunt.
Miss Sherwood was clever, gracious, everything a man could want in a
woman; and he guessed that behind her humorous references to Hunt there
was a deep feeling for the big painter who was living almost like a
tramp in the attic of the Duchess's little house. And Larry knew Miss
Sherwood was the only woman in Hunt's life; Hunt had said as much. They
were everything to each other; they trusted each other. Yet there was
some wide breach between the two; evidently his own crisis had forced
the only communication which had passed between the two for months. He
wondered what that breach could be, and what had been its cause.
And then an idea began to open its possibilities. What a splendid
return, if, somehow, he could do something that would help bring
together these two persons who had befriended him!...
But most of the time, while he waited for Miss Sherwood to summon him
again, he wondered about Maggie. Yes, as he had told Miss Sherwood,
Maggie was the most important problem of his life: all his many other
problems were important only in the degree that they aided or hindered
the solution of Maggie. Where was she?--what was she doing?--how was he,
in this pleasant prison which he dared not leave, ever to overcome her
scorn of him, and ever to divert her from that dangerous career in which
her proud and excited young vision saw only the brilliant and profitable
adventure of high romance?
CHAPTER XIII
When Maggie rode away forever from the house of the Duchess with Barney
Palmer and her father, after the denunciation of Larry by the three of
them as a stool and a squealer, she was the thrilled container of about
as many diversified emotions as often bubble and swirl in a young girl
at one and the same time. There was anger and contempt toward Larry:
Larry who had weakly thrown aside a career in which he was a master, and
who had added to that bad the worse of being a traitor. There was the
lifting sense that at last she had graduated; that at last she was set
free from the drab and petty things of life; that at last she was riding
forth into the great brilliant world in which everything happened--forth
into the fascinating, bewildering Unknown.
Barney and Old Jimmie talked to each other as the taxicab bumped through
the cobbled streets, their talk being for the most part maledictions
against Larry Brainard. But their words were meaningless sounds to the
silent Maggie, all of whose throbbing faculties were just then merged
into an excited endeavor to perceive the glorious outlines of the
destiny toward which she rode. However, as the cab turned into Lafayette
Place and rolled northward, her curiosity about the unknown became
conscious and articulate.
“Where am I going?” she asked.
“First of all to a nice, quiet hotel.” It was Barney who answered;
somehow Barney had naturally moved into the position of leader, and as
naturally her father had receded to second place. “We've got everything
fixed, Maggie. Rooms reserved, and a companion waiting there for you.”
“A companion!” exclaimed Maggie. “What for?”
“To teach you the fine points of manners, and to help you buy clothes.