Children of the Whirlwind
“Larry--where have you been all this while?”
He was now conscious enough to note that there was tense concern in her
manner. He exulted at it, and crossed and took her hand.
“Right here in New York, Maggie.”
“In hiding?”
“In mighty good hiding.”
“But, Larry--don't you know it's dangerous for you to come out? And to
come here of all places?”
“I couldn't help myself. I simply had to see you, Maggie.”
He was still holding her hand, and there was an instinctive grip of her
fingers about his. For a moment--the moment during which her outer or
more conscious self was startled into forgetfulness--they gazed at each
other silently and steadily, eye into eye.
And then the things the Duchess had said crept back into his mind, and
he said:
“Maggie, I've come to take you out of all this. Get ready--let's leave
at once.”
That broke the spell. She jerked away from him, and instantly she was
the old Maggie: the Maggie who had jeered at him and defied him the
night of his return from prison when he had announced his new plan--the
Maggie who had flaunted him as “stool” and “squealer” the evening she
had left the Duchess's to enter upon this new career.
“No, you're not going to take me out of this!” she flung at him. “I
told you once before that I wasn't going your way! I told you that I was
going my own way! That held for then, and it holds for now, and it will
hold for always!”
The softer mood which had come upon him by surprise at sight of her and
filled him, now gave way to grim determination. “Yes, you are coming my
way--sometime, if not now! And now if I can make you!”
Their embattled gazes gripped each other. But now Larry was seeing more
than just Maggie. He was also taking in the room. It was close kin to
the room in which he had left Miss Grierson: ornate, undistinguished,
and very expensive. He noted one slight difference: a tiny hallway
giving on the corridor, its inner door now opened.
But the greatest difference was what he saw over Maggie's smooth white
shoulders: a table all set with china and glass and silver, and arranged
for five.
“Maggie, what's this game you're up to?” he demanded.
“It's none of your business!” she said fiercely, but in a low tone--for
both were instinctively remembering Miss Grierson in the adjoining room.
And then she added proudly: “But it's big! Bigger than anything you ever
dreamed of! And you can see I am putting it across so far--and I'll be
putting it across at the finish! Compare it to the cheap line you talked
about. Bah!”
“Listen, Maggie!” In his intensity he gripped her bare forearm. “This is
bad business, and if you had any sense you'd know it! Don't you think
I get the layout? Barney is your cousin, Old Jimmie is your uncle, that
dame in the next room and this suite and your swell clothes to help put
up a front! And your sickness that wouldn't let you go to the theater
is just a fake, so that, not wanting to disappoint them entirely, you'd
have an excuse for having supper here--and thus adroitly draw some
person into the trap of a more intimate relationship. It's a clever and
classy layout. Maggie, exactly what's your game?”
“I'll not tell you!”
“Who's that man that's coming here?”
“I'll not tell you!”
“Is he the sucker you're out to trim?”
“I'll not tell you!”
“You will tell me!” he cried dominantly. “And you're going to get out
of all this! You hear me? It may look good to you now. But I tell you it
has only one finish! And that's a rotten finish!”
She tore free from his punishing grip, and pantingly glared at him--her
former defiance now an egoistic fury.
“I won't have you interfering with my life!--you fake preacher!--you
stool, you squealer!” she flung at him madly. “Stool--squealer!” she
repeated. “I tell you I'm going my own way--and it's a big way--and I
tell you again nothing you can say or do can stop me! If I could have my
best wish, all I'd wish for would be something to keep you from always
interfering--something to get you out of my way!”
Panting, she paused. Her tense figure, with hands closing and unclosing,
expressed the very acme of furious defiance--of desire to annihilate--of
ultimate hatred. Larry was astounded by the very extent, the profundity,
of her passion. And so they stood, silent except for their quick
breathing, eyes fixed upon eyes, for several moments.
And then a key sounded in the outer door of the little hallway.
Instantly there was an almost unbelievable transformation in Maggie.
From an imperious, uncontrollable fury, she changed to a white,
quivering thing.
“Barney!” she whispered; and sprang to the inner door of the little
hallway, closed and locked it.
She turned on Larry a face that was ghastly in its pallor.
“Barney always carries a pistol,” she whispered.
They had heard the outer door close with a click of its automatic lock.
They now heard the knob of the inner door turn and tugged at; and then
heard Barney call: “What's the matter, Maggie? Let us in.”
Maggie made a supreme effort to reply in a controlled voice:
“Just a minute. I'm not quite ready.”
Then a second voice sounded from the other side of the door:
“Don't keep us too long, Maggie. Please!”
There was a distantly familiar quality to Larry in that second voice.
But he did not try to place it then: he was too poignantly concerned in
his own situation, and in the bewildering change in Maggie.
She slipped a hand through his arm. “Oh, La-Larry, why did you ever
take such a risk!” she breathed. Her whisper was piteous, aquiver with
fright. “Come this way!” and she quickly pulled him into the room where
he had met Miss Grierson and to the door by which he had entered.
Maggie opened this door. “They're all in the little hallway--I don't
think they'll see you,” her rapid, agitated whisper went on. “Don't
take the elevators in this corridor, they're in plain sight. There are
elevators just around the corner. Take them; they're safer. Good-bye,
Larry--and, oh, Larry, don't ever take such a risk again!”
With that she pushed him out and closed the door.
Larry followed her instructions about the elevator; he used the same
precautions in leaving that he had used in coming, and twenty minutes
later he was back in his room in the Sherwood apartment. For an hour or
more he sat motionless--thinking--thinking: asking himself questions,
but in his tumultuous state of mind and emotions not able to keep to a
question long enough to reason out its possible answer.
Just what was that game in which Maggie was involved?--a game which
required that Grantham setting, that eminently respectable companion,
and Maggie's accouterment as a young lady of obvious wealth.
Whose was that vaguely familiar second voice?--that voice which he still
could not place.
But what he thought about most of all was something very different. What
had caused that swift change in Maggie?--from a fury that was both
fire and granite, to that pallid, quivering, whispering girl who had so
rapidly led him safely out of his danger.
To and fro, back and forth, shuttled these questions. Toward two o'clock
he stood up, mind still absorbed, and mechanically started to undress.
He then observed the roll of paintings Hunt had given him. Better for
them if they were flattened out. Mechanically he removed string and
paper. There on top was the Italian mother he had asked for. A great
painting--a truly great painting. Mechanically he lifted this aside to
see what was the second painting Hunt had included. Larry gave a great
start and the Italian mother went flapping to the floor.
The second painting was of Maggie; the one on which Hunt had been
working the day Larry had come back: Maggie in her plain working
clothes, looking out at the world confidently, conqueringly; the
painting in which Hunt, his brain teeming with ideas, had tried to
express the Maggie that was, the many Maggies that were in her, and the
Maggie that was yet to be.
CHAPTER XVIII
The next morning Larry tried to force his mind to attend strictly to
Miss Sherwood's affairs. But in this effort he was less than fifty
per cent effective. His experience of the night before had been too
exciting, too provocative of speculation, too involved with what he
frankly recognized to be the major interest of his life, to allow him
to apply himself with perfect and unperturbed concentration to the day's
routine. Constantly he was seeing the transformed Maggie in the cerise
evening gown with the fan of green plumes--seeing her elaborate
setting in her suite at the Grantham--hearing that vaguely familiar but
unplaceable voice outside her door--recalling the frenzied effort with
which Maggie had so swiftly effected his escape.
This last matter puzzled him greatly. If she were so angered at him as
she had declared, if she so distrusted him, why had she not given him up
when she had had him at her mercy? Could it be that, despite her words,
she had an unacknowledged liking for him? He did not dare let himself
believe this.
Again and again he thought of this adventure in whose very middle Maggie
now was, and of whose successful issue she had proudly boasted to him.
It was indeed something big, as she had said; that establishment at the
Grantham was proof of this. Larry could now perceive the adventure's
general outlines. There was nothing original in what he perceived; and
the plan, so far as he could see it, would not have interested him in
the least as a novel creation of the brain were not Maggie its central
figure, and were not Barney and Old Jimmie her directing agents.
A pretty woman was being used as a lure to some rich man, and his
infatuation for her was to cause him to part with a great deal of
money: some variation of this ancient idea, which has a thousand
variations--that was the plan.
Obviously the enterprise was not directed at some gross victim whose
palate might permit his swallowing anything. If any one item essentially
proved this, it was the item of the overwhelmingly respectable chaperon.
Maggie was being presented as an innocent, respectable, young girl; and
the victim, whoever he was, was the type of man for whom only such a
type of girl would have a compelling appeal.
And this man--who was he? Ever and again he tried to place the man's
voice, with its faintly familiar quality, but it kept dodging away like
a dream one cannot quite recall.
The whole business made Larry rage within himself. Maggie to be used
in such a way! He did not blame Maggie, for he understood her. Also he
loved her. She was young, proud, willful, had been trained to regard
such adventures as colorful and legitimate; and had not lived long
enough for experience to teach her otherwise. No, Maggie was not to
blame. But Old Jimmie! He would like to twist Old Jimmie's neck! But
then Old Jimmie was Maggie's father; and the mere fact of Old Jimmie
being Maggie's father would, he knew, safeguard the old man from his
wrath even were he at liberty to go forth and act.
He cursed his enforced seclusion. If only he were free to go out and
do his best in the open! But then, even if he were, his best endeavors
would have little influence upon Maggie--with her despising and
distrusting him as she did, and with her so determined to go ahead in
her own way.
Once during the morning, he slipped from the library into his room
and gazed at the portrait of Maggie that Hunt had given him the night
before: Maggie, self-confident, willful, a beautiful nobody who was
staring the world out of countenance; a Maggie that was a thousand
possible Maggies. And as he gazed he thought of the wager he had made
with Hunt, and of his own rather scatter-brained plannings concerning
it. He removed Maggie's portrait from the fellowship of the picture of