Children of the Whirlwind
and there, as he was now boarding her at the Duchess's--and had only
come to visit her at intervals, sometimes intervals that stretched into
months.
“Barney is rather sweet on you,” remarked Hunt after the two were gone.
“I know he is,” conceded Maggie in a matter-of-fact way.
“And he seems jealous of Larry--both regarding you, and regarding the
bunch.”
“He thinks he can run the bunch just as well as Larry. Barney's clever
all right, and has plenty of nerve--but he's not in Larry's class. Not
by a million miles!”
Hunt perceived that this daring, world-defying, embryonically beautiful
model of his had idealized the homecoming nephew of the Duchess into her
especial hero. Hunt said no more, but painted rapidly. Night had fallen
outside, and long since he had switched on the electric lights. He
seemed not at all finicky in this matter of light; he had no supposedly
indispensable north light, and midday or midnight were almost equally
apt to find him slashing with brush or scratching with crayon.
Presently the Duchess entered. No word was spoken. The Duchess,
noteworthy for her mastery of silence, sank into a chair, a bent and
shrunken image, nothing seemingly alive about her but her faintly
gleaming, deep-set eyes. Several minutes passed, then Hunt lifted the
canvas from the easel and stood it against the wall.
“That's all for to-day, Maggie,” he announced, pushing the easel to one
side. “Duchess, you and this wild young thing spread the banquet-table
while I wash up.”
He disappeared into a corner shut off by burlap curtains. From within
there issued the sound of splashing water and the sputtering roar of
snatches of the Toreador's song in a very big and very bad baritone.
Maggie put out a hand, and kept the Duchess from rising. “Sit
still--I'll fix the table.”
Silently the Duchess acquiesced. Maggie had never felt any tenderness
toward this strange, silent woman with whom she had lived for three
years, but it was perhaps an indication of qualities within Maggie,
whose existence she herself never even guessed, that she instinctively
pushed the old woman aside from tasks which involved any physical
effort. Maggie now swung the back of a laundry bench up to form a
table-top, and upon it proceeded to spread a cloth and arrange a medley
of chipped dishes. As she moved swiftly and deftly about, the Duchess
watching her with immobile features, these two made a strangely
contrasting pair: one seemingly spent and at life's grayest end, the
other electric with vitality and giving off the essence of life's
unknown adventures.
Hunt stepped out between the curtains, pulling on his coat. “You'll find
that chow in my fireless cooker will beat the Ritz,” he boasted. “The
tenderest, fattest kind of a fatted calf for the returned prodigal.”
Maggie started. “The prodigal! You mean--Larry is coming?”
“Sure,” grinned Hunt. “That's why we celebrate.”
Maggie wheeled upon the Duchess. “Is Larry really coming?”
“Yes,” said the old woman.
“But--but why the uncertainty about when he was coming back? Father and
Barney thought he was due to get out yesterday.”
“Just a mistake we all made about his release. His time was up this
afternoon.”
“But you told Barney and my father you hadn't heard from him.”
“I had heard,” said the Duchess in her flat tone. “If they want to see
him they can see him to-morrow.”
“When--when will he be here?”
“Any minute,” said the Duchess.
Without a word Maggie whirled about and the next moment she was in her
room on the floor below. She did not know what prompted her, but she had
a frantic desire to get out of this plain shirt-waist and skirt and into
something that would be striking. She considered her scanty wardrobe;
her father had recently spoken of handsome gowns and furnishings, but as
yet these existed only in his words, and the pseudo-evening gowns which
she had worn to restaurant dances with Barney she knew to be cheap and
uneffective.
Suddenly she remembered the things Hunt had given her, or had loaned
her, the evening four months earlier when he had taken her to
an artists' masquerade ball--though to her it had been a bitter
disappointment when Hunt had carried her away before the unmasking at
twelve o'clock. She tore off the offending waist and skirt, pulled from
beneath the bed the pasteboard box containing her costume; and in five
minutes of flying hands the transformation was completed. Her thick hair
of burnished black was piled on top of her head in gracious disorder,
and from it swayed a scarlet paper flower. About her lithe body, over a
black satin skirt, swathing her in its graceful folds, clung a Spanish
shawl of saffron-colored background with long brown silken fringe, and
flowered all over with brown and red and peacock blue, and held in place
by three huge barbaric pins jeweled with colored glass, one at either
hip and upon her right shoulder, leaving her smooth shoulders bare and
free. With no more than a glance to get the hasty effect, she hurried up
to the studio.
Hunt whistled at sight of her, but made no remark. Flushed, she looked
back at him defiantly. The Duchess gave no sign whatever of being aware
of the transformation.
Maggie with excited touches tried to improve her setting of the
table, aquiver with expectancy and suspense at the nearness of the
meeting--every nerve of audition strained to catch the first footfall
upon the stairs. Hunt, watching her, could but wonder, in case Larry was
the clever, dashing person that had been described, what would be the
outcome when these two natures met and perhaps joined forces.
CHAPTER IV
While the preparations for dinner were going on in the studio, down
below Larry turned a corner and swung up the narrow street toward the
pawnshop. He halted and peered in before entering; in doing this he was
obeying the caution that was his by instinct and training.
Leaning over the counter within, and chatting with his grandmother's
assistant was Casey, one of the two plain-clothesmen who had arrested
him. Larry drew back. He was not afraid of Casey, or of Gavegan, Casey's
partner, or of the whole police force, or of the State of New York; they
had nothing on him, he had settled accounts by having done his bit. All
the same, he preferred not to meet Casey just then. So he went down the
street, crossed the cobbled plaza along the water-front, and slipped
through the darkness among the trucks out to the end of the pier. Under
his feet the East River splashed sluggishly against the piles, but out
near the river's center he could see the tide swirling out to sea at six
miles an hour, toward the great shadowy Manhattan Bridge crested with
its splendid tiara of lights.
He stretched himself and breathed deeply of the warm free spring. It
tasted good after two long years of the prison's sealed air. He would
have liked to shed his clothing and dive down for a brisk fight with the
tingling water. Larry had always taken pleasure in keeping his body fit.
He had not cared for the gymnasiums of the ward clubs where he would
have been welcome; in them there had been too much rough horseplay and
foulness of mouth, and such had always been offensive to him. And
though he had ever looked the gentleman, he had known that the New York
Athletic Club and other similar clubs were not for him; they pried a bit
too much into a candidate's social and professional standing. So he had
turned to a club where really searching inquiries were rarely made;
for years he had belonged to a branch of the Y.M.C.A. located just off
Broadway, and had played handball and boxed with chunky, slow-footed
city detectives who were struggling to retain some physical activity,
and with fat playwrights, and with Jewish theatrical managers, and with
the few authentic Christians who occasionally strayed into the place and
seemed ill at ease therein. He had liked this club for another reason;
his sense of humor had often been highly excited by the thought of his
being a member of the Y.M.C.A.
Having this instinct for physical fitness, he had not greatly minded
being a coal-passer during the greater part of his stay at Sing Sing;
better that than working in the knitting mills; so that now, though
underfed and under weight, he was active and hard-muscled.
Larry Brainard could not have told why, and just when, he had turned
to devious ways. He had never put that part of his life under the
microscope. But the simple facts were that he had become an orphan at
fifteen and a broker's clerk at nineteen after a course in a business
college; and that experiences with wash-sales and such devious and
dubious practices of brokers, his high spirits, his instinct for
pleasure, his desire for big winnings--these had swept him into a wild
crowd before he had been old enough to take himself seriously, and
had started him upon a brilliant career of adventures and unlawful
money-making in whose excitement there had been no let-up until his
arrest. He had never thought about such technical and highly academic
subjects as right and wrong up to the day when Casey and Gavegan had
slipped the handcuffs upon him. To laugh, to dance, to plan and direct
clever coups, to spend the proceeds gayly and lavishly--to challenge the
police with another daring coup: that had been life to him, a game that
was all excitement.
And now, after two years in which there had been plenty of time for
thinking, his conscience still did not trouble him on the score of his
offenses. He believed, and was largely right in this belief, that the
suckers he had trimmed had all been out to secure unlawful gain and
to take cunning advantage of his supposedly foolish self and of other
dupes. He had been too clever for them, that was all; in desire and
intent they had been as great cheats as himself. So he felt no remorse
over his victims; and as for anything he may have done against that
impersonal entity, the criminal statutes, why, the period in prison
had squared all such matters. So he now faced life pleasantly and with
care-free soul.
Larry had turned away from the dark river and had started to retrace his
way, when he saw a man approaching through the darkness. Larry paused.
The man drew near and halted exactly in front of Larry. By the swing of
his body Larry had recognized the man, and his own figure instinctively
grew tense.
“What you doin' out here, Brainard?” The voice was peremptory and rough.
“Throwing kisses over at Brooklyn,” Larry replied coolly. “And what are
you doing out here, Gavegan?”
“Following you. I wanted a quiet word with you. I've been right behind
you ever since you hit New York.”
“I knew you would be. You and Casey. But you haven't got anything on
me.”
“I got plenty on you before!--with Casey helping,” retorted Gavegan.
“And I'll get plenty on you again!--now that I know you are the main guy
of a clever outfit. You'll be starting some smooth game--but I'm going
to be right after you every minute. And I'll get you. That's the news I
wanted to slip you.”
“So!” commented Larry drawlingly. “Casey's a fairly decent guy,
considering his line--but, Gavegan, I don't see how Casey stands you as
a partner. And, Gavegan, I don't see why the Board of Health lets you
stay around the streets--when putrefying matter causes so much disease.”
“None of your lip, young feller!” growled Gavegan. He stepped closer,
bulking over Larry. “You think you are such a damned smart talker and
such a damned clever schemer--but I'll bet I'll have you locked up in
six months.”
Anger boiled up within Larry. Against all the persons connected with his
arrest, trial, and imprisonment, he had no particular resentment, except
against this one man. He never could forget the time he and Gavegan, he