Children of the Whirlwind
over toothless and shrunken gums, the nose a thin, curved beak, the
eyes deep-set, gleaming, inscrutable, watching; and drawn tight over
the hair--even Maggie did not know whether that hair was a wig or the
Duchess's--the faded Oriental shawl which was fastened beneath her chin
and which fell over her thin, bent chest. There was O'Flaherty, the
good-natured policeman on the beat. There was the old watchmaker next
door. There was Black Hurley, the notorious gang leader, who sometimes
swaggered into the district like a dirty and evil feudal lord. There was
a Jewish pushcart peddler, white-bearded and skull-capped. There was an
Italian mother sitting on the curb, her feet in the gutter, smiling down
at the baby that was hungrily suckling at her milk-heavy breast. And so
on, and so on. Just the ordinary, uninteresting things Maggie saw around
the block. There was not a single pretty picture in the lot.
Hunt swung the canvas from his easel and stood it against the wall.
“That'll be all for you, Jimmie. Beat it and make room for Maggie.
Maggie, take your same pose.”
Old Jimmie ambled forward and gazed at his portrait as Hunt was settling
an unfinished picture on his easel. It had rather amused Jimmie and
filled in his idle time to sit for the crazy painter; and, incidentally,
another picture of him would do him no particular harm since the police
already had all the pictures they needed of him over at Headquarters. As
he gazed at Hunt's work Old Jimmie snickered.
“I say, Nuts, what you goin' to do with this mess of paint?”
“Going to sell it to the Metropolitan Museum, you old sinner!” snapped
Hunt.
Old Jimmie cackled at the joke. He knew pictures; that is, good
pictures. He had had an invisible hand in more than one clever
transaction in which handsome pictures alleged to have been smuggled in,
Gainsboroughs and Romneys and such (there had been most profit for him
in handling the forgeries of these particular masters), had been put,
with an air of great secrecy, into the hands of divers newly rich
gentlemen who believed they were getting masterpieces at bargain prices
through this evasion of customs laws.
“Nuts,” chuckled Old Jimmie, “this junk wouldn't be so funny if you
didn't seem to believe you were really painting.”
“Junk! Funny!” Hunt swung around, one big hand closed about Jimmie's
lean neck and the other seized his thin shoulder. “You grandfather of
the devil and all his male progeny, you talk like that and I'll chuck
you through the window!”
Old Jimmie grinned. The grip of the big hands of the painter, though
powerful, was light. They all knew that the loud ravings of the painter
never presaged violence. They had grown to like him, to accept him as
almost one of themselves; though of course they looked down upon him
with amused pity for his imbecility regarding his paintings.
“Get out of here,” continued Hunt, “or cut out all this noise that comes
from your having a brain that rattles. I've got to work.”
Hunt turned again to his easel, and Old Jimmie, still grinning, lowered
himself into a chair, lit a cigar, and winked at Barney. Hunt, with
brush poised, regarded Maggie a moment.
“You there, Maggie,” he ordered, “chin up a bit more, some flash in your
eyes, more pep in your bearing--as though you were asking all the dames
of the Winter Garden, and the Charity Ball, and the Horse Show, and that
gang of tea-swilling women at the Ritzmore you sell cigarettes to--as
though you were asking them all who the dickens they think they are... O
God, can't you do anything!”
“I'm doing the best I can, and I look more like those dames than you
look like a painter!”
“Shut up! I'm paying you a dollar an hour to pose, not to talk back to
me. And you'd have more respect for my money if you knew how hard I had
to work to earn it: carrying a motor car around in each hand. Wash off
that scowl and try to look as I said... There, that's better. Hold it.”
He began to paint rapidly, with quick glances back and forth between the
canvas and Maggie. Maggie's dress was just the ordinary shirt-waist and
skirt that the shopgirl and her sisters wear; Hunt had ordered it so.
She was above the medium height, with thick black hair tinted with
shadowy blue, long dark lashes, dark scimitars of eyebrows, a full, firm
mouth, a nose with just the right tilt to it--all effective points for
Hunt in what he wished to do. But what had attracted him most and given
him his idea was her look; hardly pertness, or impudence--rather a
cynical, mature, defiant certainty in herself.
Erect in her cheap shirt-waist, she gazed off into space with a smiling,
confident challenge to all the world. Hunt was trying to make his
picture a true portrait--and also make it a symbol of many things which
still were only taking shape in his own mind: of beauty rising from the
gutter to overcome beauty of more favored birth, and to reign above
it; also of a lower stratum surging up and breaking through the upper
stratum, becoming a part of it, or assimilating it, or conquering it.
Leading families replaced by other families, classes replaced by other
classes, nations replaced by other nations--such was the inevitable
social process--so read the records of the fifty or sixty centuries
since history began to be written. Oh, he was trying to say a lot in
this portrait of a girl of ordinary birth--even less than ordinary--in
her cheap shirt-waist and skirt!
And it pleased the sardonic element in Hunt's unmoral nature that this
Maggie, through whom he was trying to symbolize so much, he knew to be a
petty larcenist: shoplifting and matters of similar consequence. She
had been cynically frank about this to him; casual, almost boastful. Her
possessing a bent toward such activities was hardly to be wondered at,
with her having Old Jimmie as her father, and the Duchess as a landlady,
and having for acquaintances such gentlemen as Barney Palmer and this
returning prison-bird, Larry Brainard.
But petty crime, thought Hunt, would not be Maggie's forte if she
developed her possibilities. With her looks, her boldness, her
cleverness, she had the makings of a magnificent adventuress. As he
painted, he wondered what she was going to do, and become; and he
watched her not only with a painter's eye intent upon the present, but
with keen speculation upon the future.
CHAPTER III
Presently Hunt's mind shifted to Larry Brainard, whom Barney Palmer and
Old Jimmie Carlisle had come here to see. Hunt had a mind curious about
every thing and every one; and blustering, bullying creature though he
was, he had the gift, possessed by but few, of audaciously thrusting
himself into other people's affairs without arousing their resentment.
He was keen to learn Maggie's attitude toward Larry; and he spoke not so
much to gain knowledge of Larry as to draw her out.
“This Larry--what sort of chap is he, Maggie?” As with most artists,
talking did not interfere with Hunt's painting.
Warm color slowly tinted Maggie's cheeks. “He's clever,” she said
positively. “You already know that. But I was only a girl when he was
sent away.”
Hunt smiled at her idea of her present maturity, implied by her last
sentence. “But you lived with the Duchess for a year before he was sent
away. You must have seen a lot of him, and got to know him well.”
“Oh, he used to come down now and then to see his grandmother--I was
only fifteen or sixteen then--just a girl, and he didn't pay much
attention to me. Father can tell you better just how smart he is.”
Old Jimmie spoke up promptly. He knew Hunt was not a police stool, and
he liked the painter as much as it was in him to like any man; so he
felt none of the reserve or caution that might have controlled him in
other company.
“You bet Larry's smart! Got the quickest brain of any con man in the
business--and him only about twenty-seven now. Some think I'm a smooth
proposition myself, but Larry puts it all over me. That's why I'm
willing to let him be my boss. He's a wonder at thinking up new stunts,
and then at working out safe new ways of putting them across.”
“But the police landed him at last,” commented Hunt.
“Yes, but that was only because another man muffed his end of the job.”
The handsome Barney Palmer had been restless during Old Jimmie's eulogy.
“Oh, Larry's all to the good--but he's not the only party that's got
real ideas.”
“Huh!” grunted Old Jimmie. “But you'll remember that we haven't put over
any big ones since Larry's been in stir.”
“That's been because you wouldn't listen to any of my ideas!” retorted
Barney. “And I handed out some peaches.”
Even during the period of Larry's active reign it had irked Barney to
accept another man as leader, and it had irked him even more during the
interregnum while Larry was guest of the State. For Barney believed in
his own Napoleonic strain.
“Don't let yourself get sore, Barney,” Old Jimmie said appeasingly.
“You'll have plenty of chances to try out your ideas as the main guy
before you cash in. You know the outfit wanted to lay low for a while,
anyhow. But we'll be putting over a lot of the big stuff when Larry gets
out.”
Hunt had noted a quick light come into Maggie's dark eyes while her
father praised the absent leader. He himself suddenly perceived a new
possibility.
“Maggie, ever think about teaming up with Larry?” he demanded, with his
audacious keenness.
She flushed, and hesitated. He did not wait for her slow-coming reply,
but turned to her father.
“Jimmie, did Larry ever use women in his stunts?”
“Never. Whenever we suggested using a skirt, Larry absolutely said there
was nothing doing. That's one point where he was all wrong. Nothing
helps so much, when the sucker is at all sentimental, as a clever,
good-looking woman. And Larry'll come around to it all right. He'll
see the sense of it, now that he's older and has had two years to think
things over.”
Old Jimmie nodded, showing his yellow teeth in a sly grin. “You said
something a second ago: Maggie and Larry! They'll make a wonder of a
team! I mean that she'll work under him with the rest of us. I've been
thinking about it a long while. Mebbe you haven't guessed it, but we've
been coaching her for the part, and she's just about ripe. She's got
the looks, and we can dress her right for whatever job's on hand. Oh,
Larry'll put over some great things with Maggie!”
If Hunt felt that there was anything cynically unpaternal in this father
planning for his daughter a career of crime, he gave no sign of it. His
attention was just then all on Maggie. He saw her eyes grow yet more
bright at these last sentences of her father: bright with the vision of
approaching adventure.
“The idea suits you, Maggie?” he asked.
“Sure. It'll be great--for Larry is a wonder!”
Barney Palmer suddenly rose, his face twisted with anger. “I'm all fed
up on this Larry, Larry, Larry! Come on, Jimmie. Let's get uptown.”
Wise Old Jimmie saw that Barney was near an outburst. “All right,
Barney, all right,” he said promptly. “Not much use waiting any longer,
anyhow. If Larry comes, we'll fix it with the Duchess to meet him
tomorrow.”
“Then so-long, Maggie,” Barney flung at her, and that swagger ex-jockey,
gambler, and clever manipulator of the confidence of people with money,
slashed aside the shabby burlap curtains with his wisp of a bamboo
walking-stick, and strode out of the room.
“Good-night, daughter,” and Old Jimmie crossed and kissed her. She
kissed him back--a perfunctory kiss. Maggie had never paused to think
the matter out, but for some reason she felt little real affection for
her father, though of course she admired his astuteness. Perhaps her
unconscious lack of love was due in part to the fact that she had never
lived with him. Ever since she remembered he had boarded her out, here