Children of the Whirlwind
suffering she had wrought.
“To think that this has all been horrible make-believe!” he at last
groaned. “That all the while I've been looked on as just a young fool
who would always remain a fool!”
Maggie, in her sense of guilt, was helpless to make any reply that would
soften his agony; and for a space neither spoke.
Presently Dick stood suddenly up. His face was still marked by
suffering, but somehow it seemed to have grown older without losing its
youth. There was a new blaze of determination in the direct look he held
on Maggie.
“You say you have never loved me?” he demanded.
She shook her head. “But I've told you that I've always liked you.”
“Larry Brainard's doing what he has kept on doing for you--that means
that he loves you, doesn't it?” he pressed on.
“He has told me so.”
“And you love him?”
“What difference does that make?--since I am going away as soon as I get
everything I'm wholly or partly responsible for cleared up.”
“If Larry Brainard has known you for a long while, then how about Barney
Palmer and Jimmie Carlisle?”
“They've known me as long, or longer.”
“Then you must have all known each other?”
“Yes. Years ago Larry worked with Barney and Jimmie Carlisle.”
“What was the attitude of those two toward Larry, when he was trying to
balk them by making you give up the plan?”
“They hated him. They are the cause--especially Barney--of all of
Larry's trouble with the police and with the old crowd he's quit. To try
to clear Larry, that's the most important thing I'm going to try to do.”
“And that's where you've got to let me help you!” Dick cried with sudden
energy. “Larry's been a mighty good friend to me--he's tried to head me
right--and I owe him a lot. And I'd like a chance to show that Barney
Palmer I'm not going to keep on being the eternal fool he sized me up to
be!”
Maggie was startled by this swift transformation. “Why--why, Dick!” she
breathed.
“What's your plan to clear Larry?”
“I hadn't got so far as to have a clear plan. I had only just realized
that there had to be a plan. But since they have set the police on
Larry, it came to me that the idea behind any plan would be for the
police to really capture Barney and Jimmie Carlisle--get them out of
Larry's way.”
“That's it!” Dick Sherwood had a mind which, given an interesting
stimulus, could work swiftly; and it worked swiftly now. “They were
planning to trim me. Let's use that plan you outlined to me--use it
to-night. You can tell them some story which will make immediate action
seem necessary and we'll all get together this evening. I'll play my
part all right--don't you worry about me! I'll come with a roll of
money that I'll dig up somewhere, and it'll be marked money. When it's
passed--bingo!--a couple of detectives that we'll have planted to watch
the proceedings will step right up and nab the two!”
She was taken aback by the very idea of him, the victim, after
her confession, throwing his lot in with her. “Why, Dick”--she
stammered--“to think of you offering to do such a thing!”
“I owe that much to Larry Brainard,” he declared. “And--and I owe that
much to your desire to help set him straight. Well, what about my plan?”
Since he seemed eager to lend himself to it, it seemed to her altogether
wonderful, and she told him so. They discussed details for several
minutes, for there was much to be done and it had all to be done most
adroitly. It was agreed that he should come at ten o'clock, when the
stage would all be set.
As he was leaving to attend to his part of the play, a precautionary
idea flashed upon Maggie.
“Better telephone me just before you come. Something may have happened
to change our plans.”
“All right--I'll telephone. Just keep your nerve.”
With that he hurried out. At about the time he left, Larry was leaving
Cedar Crest in handcuffs beside the burly and triumphant Gavegan, and
believing that the power he had sought to exercise was now effectually
at an end. He was out of it. In his despondency it was not granted him
to see that the greatest thing which he could do was already done; that
he had set in motion all the machinery of what had taken place and
what was about to take place; that all the figures in the action of the
further drama of that night were to act as they were to do primarily
because of promptings which came from him.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Dick's departure left Maggie to think alone upon an intricate and
possibly dangerous interplay of characters in which she had cast herself
for the chief role, which might prove a sacrificial role for her. She
quickly perceived that Dick's plan, clever as it might be, would bring
about, in the dubious event of its success, only one of the several
happenings which had to come to pass if she were to clear her slate
before her disappearance.
Dick's plan was good; but it would only get rid of Barney and Old
Jimmie. It would only rid Larry of such danger as they represented; it
would only be revenge upon them for the evil they had done. And, after
all, revenge helped a man forward but very little. There would still
remain, even in the event of the success of Dick's plan, the constant
danger to Larry from the police hunt, instigated by Chief Barlow's
vindictive determination to send Larry back to prison for his refusal to
be a stool-pigeon; and the constant danger from his one-time friends who
were hunting him down with deadly hatred as a squealer.
Somehow, if she were to set things right for Larry, she had to maneuver
that night's happenings in such a way as to eliminate forever Barlow's
persecutions, and eliminate forever the danger to Larry from his
friends' and their hirelings' desire for vengeance upon a supposed
traitor.
Maggie thought rapidly, elaborating on Dick's plan. But what Maggie did
was not so much the result of sober thought as of the inspiration of a
desperate, hardly pressed young woman; but then, after all, what we call
inspiration is only thought geared to an incredibly high speed. First
of all, she got rid of that slow-witted, awesome supernumerary, Miss
Grierson, who might completely upset the delicate action of the stage
by a dignified entrance at the wrong moment and with the wrong cue. Next
she called up Chief Barlow at Police Headquarters. Fortunately for her
Barlow was still in; for an acrimonious dispute, then in progress and
taking much space in the public prints, between him and the District
Attorney's office was keeping him late at his desk despite the most
autocratic and pleasant of all demands, those of his dinner hour. To
him Maggie gave a false name, and told him that she had most important
information to communicate at once; to which he growled back that she
could give it if she came down at once.
Next she called up Barney, who had been waiting near a telephone in
expectation of news of the result of her second visit to the home of
Dick Sherwood. To Barney she said that she had the greatest possible
news--news which would require immediate action--and that he should be
at her suite at nine o'clock prepared to play his part at once in the
big proposition that had just developed, and that he should get word to
Old Jimmie to follow him in a few minutes.
Within fifteen minutes a taxicab had whirled her down to Police
Headquarters and she was in the office where three months earlier Larry
had been grilled after his refusal of the license to steal and cheat on
the condition that he become a police stool. Barlow, who was alone in
the room, looked up with a scowl from a secret report he had secured of
the activities of detectives in the District Attorney's office. Although
Maggie was pretty and stylishly dressed, Barlow did not rise nor did he
remove the big cigar he had been viciously gnawing. It is the tradition
of the Police Department, the most thoroughly respected article of its
religion, that a woman who is seen in Police Headquarters cannot by any
possibility be a lady.
“Well, what's on your chest?” he grunted, not even asking her to be
seated.
It was suddenly Maggie's impulse--sprung perhaps out of unconscious
memory of what Larry had suffered--to inflict upon herself the uttermost
humiliation. So she said:
“I've come here to offer myself as a stool-pigeon.”
“What's that?” Barlow exclaimed, startled. It was not often that a swell
lady--who of course couldn't be a swell (he did not know who Maggie
was)--voluntarily walked into his office with such a proposition.
“I can give you some real information about a big game that's being
worked up. In fact, I can arrange for you to be present when the game is
pulled off, and you can make the arrests.”
“Who are the people?” he asked brusquely.
Maggie knew it would be fatal to mention Barney or Old Jimmie, if that
story about Barlow's protection contained any truth. Again inspiration,
or incredibly swift thinking, came to her aid, and with sure touch she
twanged one of Barlow's rawest and most responsive nerves.
“Larry Brainard is behind it all. He's been doing a lot of things on the
quiet these last few months. Here is where you can get his whole crowd.”
“Larry Brainard!”
Maggie did not yet know what had befallen Larry, and Gavegan had
neglected to telephone his Chief of the arrest. Even had Gavegan done
so, the large and vague manner in which Maggie had stated the situation
would have stirred Barlow's curiosity.
“All right. I'll put a couple of my good men on the case. Where shall I
send 'em?”
“A couple of your good men won't do. I want only one of your good
men--and that man is yourself.”
“Me!” growled Barlow. “What kind of floor-walker d'you think I am? I'm
too busy!”
“Too busy to take personal charge, and get personal credit, for one of
the biggest cases that ever went through this office?”
Maggie had sought only to excite his vanity. But unknowingly she had
also appealed to something else in him: his very deep concern in the
hostile activities of the District Attorney's office. If this girl told
the truth, then here might be his chance to display such devotion
to duty as to turn up some such sensational case as would make this
investigation from the District Attorney's office seem to the public
an unholy persecution and make the chagrined District Attorney, who
was very sensitive to public opinion, think it wiser to drop the whole
matter.
“How do I know you're not trying to string me?--or get me out of the way
of something bigger?--or hand me the double-cross?”
“I shall be there all the time, and if you don't like the way the thing
develops you can arrest me. I suppose you've got some kind of law, with
a stiff punishment attached, about conspiracy against an officer.”
“Well--give me all the dope, and tell me where I'm to come,” he yielded
ungraciously.
“I've told you all I am going to tell. All the important 'dope' you'll
get first-hand by being present when the thing happens. The place to
come is the Hotel Grantham--room eleven-forty-two--at eight-thirty
sharp.”
To this Barlow grudgingly agreed. He might have exulted inwardly, but
he would have shown no outer graciousness if a committee of citizens had
handed him a reward of a million dollars and an engrossed testimonial to
his unprecedented services. Barlow did not know how to thank any one.
Five minutes after she left Headquarters Maggie was in the back room of
the Duchess's pawnshop, which her rapid planning had fixed upon as the
next station at which she should stop. She did not waste a moment in
coming to the point with the Duchess.
“Red Hannigan is really the most important of Larry's old friends who
are out to get him, isn't he?” she asked.
“Yes--in a way. I mean among those who honestly think Larry has turned
stool and squealer. He trusted Larry more than any one else--and now