Children of the Whirlwind
“I did think of telling you or Dick. But my greatest interest was to
awaken that better person I believed to be in her; and I knew that the
certain result of my exposing her to you would be for me to lose the
last bit of influence I had with her, and for her to pass right on to
another enterprise of similar character. So the idea came to me that if
I didn't expose her, but caused her to be received with every courtesy
by her intended victims, the effect upon her would be that she would
feel a revulsion for what she was doing and she would come to her best
senses. I told this to Mr. Hunt; that's why he agreed not to give her
away. And another point, though frankly this was not so important to me:
it seemed to me that a good hard jolt might be just what was needed to
make Dick take life more seriously, and I saw in this affair a chance
for Dick to get just the jolt he needed.
“That's all, Miss Sherwood. Except that I have seen signs which make me
believe that what I figured would happen to Maggie Carlisle have begun
to happen to her.”
“Bunk!” snorted Gavegan.
“I know that part of what he says is true,” put in Hunt.
Miss Sherwood ignored Hunt and his remark. The look of controlled wrath
which she held upon Larry did not change. Larry recognized that his
statement had sounded most implausible. Miss Sherwood in her indignation
considered only that her kindness had been betrayed, her hospitality
outraged, and that those she had accepted as friends had sought to
trick her family in the worst way she could conceive; and she spoke
accordingly.
“If that is the best Mr. Brainard has to say for himself, Mr. Gavegan,
you may take him with you, and without any interference from me. I ask
only that you take him out of the house at once.”
With that she moved from the room, not looking again at either Hunt
or Larry. For a brief space there was silence, while Gavegan let his
triumph feed gloatingly upon the sight of his prisoner.
This brief silence was broken by a low, strange sound, like a human
cry quickly repressed, that seemed to come from just outside the French
windows.
“What was that?” Larry asked quickly.
“I didn't hear anything,” said Gavegan whose senses had been thoroughly
concentrated upon his triumph.
“I did,” said Hunt. “On the veranda.”
“We'll see. Watch him--” to the county officer; and Gavegan followed
Hunt to the French windows and looked out. “No one on the veranda, and
no one in sight,” he reported. “You fellows must have been dreaming.”
He returned and faced Larry. “I guess you'll admit, Brainard, that I've
got you for keeps this time.”
“Then suppose we be starting for Headquarters.” Larry responded.
Hunt moved to Larry's side. “I'll just trail along after you, Larry.
Anyhow, this doesn't seem to be any place for me.”
A few minutes afterwards Larry was in a car beside Gavegan, speeding
away from Cedar Crest toward the city. Larry's thoughts were the
gloomiest he had entertained since he had come out of Sing Sing months
before with his great dream. All that he had counted on had gone wrong.
He was in the hands of the police, and he knew how hard the police would
be. He had incurred the hostility of Miss Sherwood and had lost what had
seemed a substantial opportunity to start his career as an honest man.
The only item of his great plan in which he did not seem to have failed
completely was Maggie. And he did not know what Maggie was going to do.
CHAPTER XXXII
When Maggie drove away with Dick from Cedar Crest--this was an hour
before Gavegan descended out of the blue upon Larry and two hours before
he rode triumphantly away with his captive--she was the most dazed and
disillusioned young creature who had ever set out confidently to conquer
the world. Courage, confidence, quickness of wit, all the qualities on
which she had prided herself, were now entirely gone, and she was just
a white, limp figure that wanted to run away: a weak figure in which
swirled thoughts almost too spasmodically powerful for so weakened a
vessel not to be shattered under their wild strain: thoughts of her
amazingly discovered real father--of how she was the very contradiction
of her father's dream--of Larry--of the cunning Jimmie Carlisle whom
till this day she had believed her father--of Barney Palmer.
So agitated was she with these gyrating thoughts that she was not
conscious that Dick had stopped the car on the green roadside until
he had taken her hand and had begun to speak. The happy, garrulous,
unobservant Dick had not noticed anything out of the way with her more
than a pallor which she had explained away as being due to nothing more
than a bit of temporary dizziness. And so for the second time Dick now
poured out his love to her and asked her to marry him.
“Don't, Dick--please!” she interrupted him. “I can't marry you! Never!”
“What!” cried the astounded Dick. “Maggie--why not?”
“I can't. That's final. And don't make me talk to you now, Dick--please!
I cannot!”
His face, so fresh and happy the moment before, became gray and lined
with pain. But he silently swung the car back into the road.
She forgot him utterly in what was happening within her. As they rode
on, she forced herself to think of what she should do. She saw herself
as the victim of much, and as guilty of much. And then inspiration came
upon her, or perhaps it was merely a high frenzy of desperation, and she
saw that the responsibility for the whole situation was upon her alone;
she saw it as her duty, the role assigned her, to try to untangle alone
this tangled situation, to try to measure out justice to every one.
First of all, as she had told Larry, her father's dream of her must
remain unbroken. Whatever she did, she must do nothing that might
possibly be a sharp blow to the conception of his daughter which were
the roots and trunk and flowering branches of his present happiness.. ..
And then came a real inspiration! She would, in time, make herself into
the girl he believed her--make his dream the truth! She would get rid of
Old Jimmie and Barney--would cut loose from everything pertaining to her
former life--would disappear and live for a year or two in the kind of
environment in which he believed he had placed her--and would reappear
and claim him for her father! And for his own sake, he should never know
the truth. Two years more and he should have the actuality, where he now
had only the dream!
But before she was free to enter upon this plan, before she could vanish
out of the knowledge of all who had known her, there was a great duty to
Larry Brainard which she must discharge. He was hunted by the police,
he was hunted by his former pals. And he was in his predicament
fundamentally because of her. Therefore, it was her foremost duty to
clear Larry Brainard.
Yes, she would do that first! Somehow!...
She was considering this problem of how she was to clear Larry, who
had tried to awaken her, who had shielded her, who loved her, when Dick
slowed his car down in front of the Grantham and helped her out. As he
said a subdued good-bye and was stepping back into his car, an impulse
surged up into her--an impulse of this different Maggie whose birth was
being attended by such bewildering emotions and decisions.
“Dick, won't you please come up for just a little while?”
Three minutes later they were in her sitting-room. Cap in hand Dick
awaited her words in the misery of silence. Her look was drawn, but
direct.
“Back in the road, Dick, you asked me why I couldn't marry you. I asked
you up here to tell you.”
“Yes?” he queried dully.
“One reason is that, though I like you, I don't like you that way. The
more important reason to you is that I am a fraud.”
“A fraud!” he exclaimed incredulously.
It had come to her, as she was leaving the car, that the place to start
her new life was to start right, or quit right, with Dick. “A fraud,”
she repeated--“an impostor. There is no Maggie Cameron. I am born of no
good family from the West. I have no money. I have always lived in New
York--most of the time down on the East Side. I used to work in a Fifth
Avenue millinery shop. Till three months ago I sold cigarettes in one of
the big hotels.”
“What of that!” cried Dick.
“That is the nicest part of what I have to tell you,” she continued
relentlessly. “My supposed relatives, Jimmie Carlisle and Barney Palmer,
are no relatives at all, but are two clever confidence men. I have been
in with them, working on a scheme they have framed. Everything I have
seemed to be, everything I have done, even this expensive apartment,
have all been parts of that scheme. The idea of that scheme was to
swindle some rich man out of a lot of money--through my playing on his
susceptibilities.”
“Maggie!” he gasped.
“More concretely, the idea was to trick some rich man into falling in
love with me, to get him to propose, then to have me confess that I was
already married, but to a man who would give me a divorce if he were
paid enough. The rich man would then drive a bargain with my supposed
husband, pay over a lot of money--after which Barney, Old Jimmie, and I
would disappear with our profits.”
“Maggie!” he repeated, stupefied with his incredulous amazement. But the
unflinching gaze she held upon him convinced him she was speaking the
truth. “Then, if that was your game, why are you telling me now? Why
didn't you say 'yes' when I proposed a week ago? I would have fallen for
the game; you would have succeeded.”
Not till that moment did Maggie realize the full truth; not till then
did she realize the solid influence Larry Brainard had been in the
background of her life all these months.
“I didn't go through with it because of Larry Brainard.”
“Larry Brainard!” His astonishment increased. “You know Larry Brainard,
then?”
“I've known him for several years.”
“And you've been coming out, and he's been pretending not to know you!
Of course I knew what Larry Brainard has been. But is he in this, too?”
“No. He's exactly what you think him. From the start he's been trying to
keep me out of this. He was behind my coming to your house; he's told me
so. His reason for getting me there was his belief that my being treated
by you and your sister as I was would make me ashamed of myself and
make me want to quit what I was doing. And I think--I think he was
right--partly.”
“And Larry--he's the reason you're telling me now?”
“I think so. But there are other reasons.” Making a clean breast of
things though she was, she felt she dared not trust Dick with the
secret of her father. “I--I wanted to clear things up as far as I was
responsible. That's one reason I'm telling you. There was the chance
you might sometime find out that Larry had known me and suspect him; I
wanted you to know the truth of what he'd really done. And I wanted to
tell you the truth about myself, so you'd despise and forget me, instead
of perhaps carrying around romantic delusions about me after I've
gone. And there's another reason. I'd like to tell you--for you've been
everything that's fine to me--if it won't offend you.”
“Go on,” he said huskily.
“Barney Palmer picked you out as the victim--you didn't know you were
being picked out--because he said that you were an easy mark. That you
took things for exactly what they pretended to be, and didn't care
what you did with your money. That you never would settle down into a
responsible person. I'm telling you all this, Dick, because I don't want
you to be what Barney said.”
Dick slumped into a chair, at last beaten down by this cumulative
revelation. He buried his face in his hands and his panting breath was
convulsive with unuttered sobs. Maggie looked down upon the young boy,
with pity, remorse, and an increasing recognition of the wide-spread