Children of the Whirlwind
“What kind of prices was Mr. Graham quoting?”
“He wasn't quoting any. He told me he wasn't going to sell a picture,
or even mention a price, until the public exhibition. He's very
enthusiastic. He thinks Mr. Hunt is already made--and in a big way.”
And then she added, her level gaze very steady on Larry:
“Of course Mr. Hunt is really a great painter. But he needed a jolt to
make him go out and really paint his own kind of stuff. And he needed
some one like you to put him across in a business way.”
When she left, she left Larry thinking: thinking of her saying that
Hunt “needed a jolt to make him go out and really paint his own kind
of stuff.” Hidden behind that remark somewhere could there be the
explanation for the break between these two? Larry began to see a
glimmer of light. It was entirely possible that Miss Sherwood, in so
finished and adroit a manner that Hunt had not discerned her purpose,
had herself given him this jolt or at least contributed to its force. It
might all have been diplomacy on her part, applied shrewdly to the
man she understood and loved. Yes, that might be the explanation. Yes,
perhaps she had been doing in a less trying way just what he was seeking
to do under more stressful circumstances with Maggie: to arouse him to
his best by indirectly working at definite psychological reactions.
That afternoon Hunt appeared at Cedar Crest, and while there dropped in
on Larry. The big painter, in his full-blooded, boyish fashion, fairly
gasconaded over the success of his exhibit. Larry smiled at the other's
exuberant enthusiasm. Hunt was one man who could boast without ever
being offensively egotistical, for Hunt, added to his other gifts, had
the divine gift of being able to laugh at himself.
Larry saw here an opportunity to forward that other ambition of his:
the bringing of Hunt and Miss Sherwood together. And at this instant
it flashed upon him that Miss Sherwood's seemingly casual remarks about
Hunt had not been casual at all. Perhaps they had been carefully thought
out and spoken with a definite purpose. Perhaps Miss Sherwood had been
very subtly appointing him her ambassador. She was clever enough for
that.
“Stop declaiming those self-written press notices of your unapproachable
superiority,” Larry interrupted. “If you use your breath up like that
you'll drown on dry land. Besides, I just heard something better than
this mere articulated air of yours. Better because from a person in her
senses.”
“Heard it from whom?”
“Miss Sherwood.”
“Miss Sherwood! What did she say?”
“That you were a really great painter.”
“Huh!” snorted Hunt. “Why shouldn't she say that? I've proved it!”
“Hunt,” said Larry evenly, “you are the greatest painter I ever met,
but you also have the distinction of being the greatest of all damned
fools.”
“What's that, young fellow?”
“You love Miss Sherwood, don't you? At least you've the same as told me
that in words, and you've told me that in loud-voiced actions every time
you've seen her.”
“Well--what if I do?”
“If you had the clearness of vision that is in the glassy eye of a cold
boiled lobster you would see that she feels the same way about you.”
“See here, Larry”--all the boisterous quality had gone from Hunt's
voice, and it was low-pitched and a bit unsteady--“I don't mind your
joshing me about myself or my painting, but don't fool with me about
anything that's really important.”
“I'm not fooling you. I'm sure Miss Sherwood feels that way.”
“How do you know?”
“I've got a pair of eyes that don't belong to a cold boiled lobster. And
when I see a thing, I know I see it.”
“You're all wrong, Larry. If you'd heard what she said to me less than a
year ago--”
“You make me tired!” interrupted Larry. “You two were made for each
other. She's waiting for you to step up and talk man's talk to her--and
instead you sulk in your tent and mumble about something you think she
might have thought or said a year ago! You're too sensitive; you're too
proud; you've got too few brains. It's a million dollars to one that in
your handsome, well-bred way you've fallen out with her over something
that probably never existed and certainly doesn't exist now. Forget it
all, and walk right up and ask her!”
“Larry, if I thought there was a chance that you are right--”
“A single question will prove whether I'm right!”
Hunt did not speak for a moment. “I guess I've never seen my part of it
all in the way you put it, Larry.” He stood up, his whole being subdued
yet tense. “I'm going to slide back into town and think it all over.”
Larry followed him an hour later, bent on routine business of the
Sherwood estate. Toward seven o'clock he was studying the present
decrepitude and future possibilities of a row of Sherwood apartment
houses on the West Side, when, as he came out of one building and
started into another, a firm hand fell upon his shoulder and a voice
remarked:
“So, Larry, you're in New York?”
Larry whirled about. For the moment he felt all the life go out of him.
Beside him stood Detective Casey, whom he had last seen on the night
of his wild flight when Casey had feigned a knockout in order to aid
Larry's escape from Gavegan. Any other man affiliated with his enemies
Larry would have struck down and tried to break away from. But not
Casey.
“Hello, Casey. Well, I suppose you're going to invite me to go along
with you?”
“Where were you going?”
“Into this house.”
“Then I'll invite myself to go along with you.”
He quickly pushed Larry before him into the hallway, which was empty
since all the tenants were at their dinner. Larry remembered the scene
down in Deputy Police Commissioner Barlow's office, when the Chief of
Detectives had demanded that he become a stool-pigeon working under
Gavegan and Casey, and the grilling and the threats, more than
fulfilled, which had followed.
“Going to give me a little private quiz first, Casey,” he asked, “and
then call in Gavegan and lead me down to Barlow?”
“Not unless Gavegan or some one else saw and recognized you, which
I know they didn't since I was watching for that very thing. And not
unless you yourself feel hungry for a visit to Headquarters.”
“If I feel hungry, it's an appetite I'm willing to make wait.”
“You know I don't want to pinch you. My part in this has been a dirty
job that was just pushed my way. You know that I know you've been framed
and double-crossed, and that I won't run you in unless I can't get out
of it.”
“Thanks, Casey. You're too white to have to run with people like Barlow
and Gavegan. But if it wasn't to pinch me, why did you stop me out there
in the street?”
“Been hoping I might some day run into you on the quiet. There are some
things I've learned--never mind how--that I wanted to slip you for your
own good.”
“Go to it, Casey.”
“First, I've got a hunch that it was Barney Palmer who tipped off the
police about Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt, and then spread it among
all the crooks that you were the stool and squealer.”
“Yes, I'd guessed that much.”
“Second, I've got a hunch that it really was from Barney Palmer that
Barlow got his idea of making you become a stool-pigeon. Barney is a
smooth one all right, and he figured what would happen. He knew you
would refuse, and he knew Barlow would uncork hell beneath you. Barney
certainly called every turn.”
“What--what--” stammered Larry. “Why, then Barney must be--” He paused,
utterly astounded by the newness of the possibility that had just risen
in his mind.
“You've got it, Larry,” Casey went on. “Barney is a police stool. Has
been one for years. Works directly for Barlow. We're not supposed to
know anything about it. He's turned up a lot of big ones. That's why
it's safe for Barney to pull off anything he likes.”
“Barney a police stool!” Larry repeated in the stupor of his amazement.
“Guess that's all the news I wanted to hand you, Larry, so I'll be on my
way. Here's wishing you luck--and for God's sake, don't let yourself be
pinched by us. So-long.” And with that Casey slipped out of the hallway.
For a moment Larry stood moveless where Casey had left him. Then fierce
purpose, and a cautious recklessness, surged up and took mastery of him.
It had required what Casey had told him to end his irksome waiting and
wavering. No longer could he remain in his hiding-place, safe himself,
trying to save Maggie by slow, indirect endeavor. The time had now come
for very different methods. The time had come to step forth into the
open, taking, of course, no unnecessary risk, and to have it out face to
face with his enemies, who were also Maggie's real enemies, though she
counted them her friends--to save Maggie against her own will, if he
could save her in no other way.
And having so decided, Larry walked quickly out of the hallway into the
street.
CHAPTER XXVII
On the sidewalk Larry glanced swiftly around him. Half a block down the
street on the front of a drug-store was a blue telephone flag. A minute
later he was inside a telephone booth in the drug-store, asking first
for the Hotel Grantham, and then asking the Grantham operator to be
connected with Miss Maggie Cameron.
There was a long wait. While he listened for Maggie's voice he blazed
with terrible fury against Barney Paler. For Maggie to be connected with
a straight crook, that idea had been bad enough. But for her to be under
the influence of the worst crook of all, a stool, a cunning traitor to
his own friends--that was more than could possibly be stood! In his rage
in Maggie's behalf he forgot for the moment the many evils Barney had
done to himself. He thought of wild, incoherent, vaguely tremendous
plans. First he would get Maggie away from Barney and Old
Jimmie--somehow. Then he would square accounts with those two--again by
an undefined somehow.
Presently the tired, impersonal voice of the Grantham operator remarked
against his ear-drum: “Miss Cameron don't answer.”
“Have her paged, please,” he requested.
Larry, of course, could not know that his telephone call was the very
one which had rung in Maggie's room while Barney and Old Jimmie
were with her, and which Barney had harshly forbidden her to answer.
Therefore he could not know that any attempt to get Maggie by telephone
just then was futile.
When he came out of the booth, the impersonal voice having informed
him that Miss Cameron was not in, it was with the intention of calling
Maggie up between eight and nine when she probably would have returned
from dinner where he judged her now to be. He knew that Dick Sherwood
had no engagement with her, for Dick was to be out at Cedar Crest that
evening, so he judged it almost certain Maggie would be at home and
alone later on.
Having nothing else to do for an hour and a half, he thought of a note
he had received from the Duchess in that morning's mail asking him to
come down to see her when he was next in town. Thirty minutes later he
was in the familiar room behind the pawnshop. The Duchess asked him
if he had eaten, and on his reply that he had not and did not care
to, instead of proceeding to the business of her letter she mumbled
something and went into the pawnshop.
She left Larry for the very simple reason that now that she had him
here she was uncertain what she should say, and how far she should go.
Unknown to either, one thread of the drama of Larry and Maggie was being
spun in the brain and heart of the Duchess; and being spun with pain
to her, and in very great doubt. True, she had definitely decided, for
Larry's welfare, that the facts about Maggie's parentage should never be
known from her--and since the only other person who could tell the truth
was Jimmie Carlisle, and his interests were all apparently in favor of