Children of the Whirlwind
Hannigan!” he exclaimed.
“Yes--you damned squealer! And I'm going to finish you off right here!”
The light clicked out, and a pair of lean hands almost closed on Larry's
wind-pipe. But Larry caught the wrists of the older man in a grip the
other could not break. There was a brief struggle in the blackness of
the closet, then the slighter man stood still with his wrists manacled
by Larry's hands.
“Evidently you haven't a gun on you, Red, or you, wouldn't have tried
this,” Larry commented. “Anyhow, you couldn't have got away with killing
in a big hotel, whether you had strangled me or shot me. I don't blame
you for being sore at me, Red--only you've got me all wrong. But you
and I are evidently here for the same purpose: to get next to something
that's going to happen out in the room. What do you say, Red?--let's
suspend hostilities for the present. You've got me where you can follow
me, and you can get me any time.”
“You bet I'll get you!” declared Hannigan. And then after a few more
words an armistice was agreed upon between the two men in the closet
and silently, tensely, they stood in the dark awaiting whatever was to
happen.
Outside Maggie, that amateur playwright who had tried so desperately to
prearrange events, that inexperienced goddess from the machine, stood in
a panic of fear and suspense the like of which she had never known.
CHAPTER XXXIV
But when Barney's latch-key slid into the door and Barney, in a smart
dinner jacket, came in, Maggie was herself again. Indeed she was better
than herself, for there rushed to her support that added power which she
had just been despairing of, which carries some people through an hour
of crisis, and which may occasionally lift an actor above himself when
fortune gives him a difficult yet splendid part which is the great
chance of his career.
And Maggie showed to the eye that she was better than her best, for
Barney exclaimed the instant he was beside her: “Gee, Maggie, you look
like the Queen of Sheba, whoever that dame was! Any guy would fall for
you to-night--and fall so hard that he'd break, or go broke!”
But Barney was too eager to await any response. “What's behind the
hurry-up call you sent in? Anything broken yet?”
“Something big! But sit down. There's a lot to tell. And I must tell it
quick--before my”--she could not force herself to say “father”--“before
Old Jimmie comes, and Dick.”
“Then Dick's coming?”
“Yes. Things have taken a twist so that everything breaks to-night. But
sit down, and I'll tell you everything.”
She had noted that the door behind which Larry stood, and to which
he had captured the key, was open a bare half-inch. It looked no more
suspicious than any closet door that by accident had swung free of its
latch, but by deft maneuvering Maggie managed so that Barney sat at the
table with his back toward both closets.
“Go to it, Maggie,” he urged.
The plan which had swiftly developed from Dick Sherwood's idea required
that she should tell much that was the truth and much that was not
truth, and required that she should play with every faculty and every
attraction she possessed upon Barney's tremendous vanity and upon his
jealous admiration of her. She had to make him believe more in her as a
pal than ever before; she had to make him want her more as a woman than
ever before. And at this moment she felt herself thrillingly equal to
this vampire role her over-stimulated sense of justice had commanded her
to undertake.
“Things have gone great,” she began, speaking concisely, yet trying not
in this eager brevity to lose the convincing effect that she would
be the complete mistress of any enterprise to which she yielded her
interest. “Dick Sherwood proposed to me again, and this time I said
`yes.' I saw that he was ready for anything, so I took some things into
my hands. I had to, for I saw we had to act quick even at the risk of
losing a bit of the maximum figure we had counted on. You see I realized
the danger to us in Larry Brainard suddenly showing up, and his knowing,
as he told us he did, who the sucker is that we've been stringing along.
Anything might happen, any minute, from Larry Brainard that would upset
everything. So I reasoned that we had to collect quick or run the risk
of never getting a nickel.”
“Some bean you've got, Maggie,” he said admiringly. “Keep your foot on
the gas pedal.”
“What I did was only, the carrying-out of the plan you had decided
on--of course carrying it out quicker, and with a few little changes
that the urgent situation demanded. After he proposed I broke down, as
per schedule, and confessed that I had deceived him to the extent that I
was already married. Married to a man I didn't love, and who didn't love
me, but who was a tight-wad and who wouldn't let me go unless he saw a
lot of money in it for him. And I gave Dick all the rest of the story,
just as we had doped it out.”
“Great work, Maggie! How did he take it?”
“Exactly as we figured he would. He was sorry for me; it didn't make any
difference at all in his feelings for me. He'd buy my husband off--give
him any price he wanted--and just so I wouldn't have to feel myself
bound to such a man a minute longer than necessary he'd make a bargain
with him at once and pay him part of the money right down. To-night, if
he could get in touch with my husband. And so, Barney, since we had to
act quick and there was no time to bring in another man that I could
pass off as my husband, I confessed to him that I was married to you.”
“To me!” exclaimed Barney.
“And he's coming here in less than an hour, with real money in his
pockets, to see if he can't fix a deal with you.”
“Me!” exclaimed the startled Barney again. His beady eyes glowed at her
ardently. “Gee, you know I wish I really was married to you, Maggie! If
I was, you bet money couldn't ever pry you loose from me!”
“Well, there's the whole lay-out, Barney. It's up to you to be my
grasping, bargaining, unloving husband for about an hour.”
“I hadn't thought of myself in that part,” he objected. “I'd figured
that we'd bring in a new man to be the husband. It's pretty dangerous
for me, my stringing Dick along all this while and then suddenly to
enter the act as your husband--and to take the money.”
“Dangerous!” There was sudden contempt in her voice and in her eyes.
“So you're that kind of man, Barney--afraid! And afraid after my
telling Dick you were my husband, and his swallowing the thing without
a suspicion! Well, right this minute is when we call this deal off--and
every other deal!”
“Oh, don't be so quick with that temper of yours, Maggie! I merely said
it was dangerous. Of course I'll do it.”
And then Barney asked, with a cunning he tried to hide: “But why did
you ask me to have Old Jimmie show up here right after me? We don't need
him.”
“Just what's behind your saying that, Barney?” she demanded sharply.
He squirmed a little, then spoke the truth. “You don't love your father
any too much, and he doesn't love you any too much--I know that. He
needn't really know how much we take off Sherwood; if he wasn't here,
he'd have to take our word for what we got and we'd tell him we got
mighty little. Then the real money would be divided fifty-fifty between
just you and me.”
“I may not love my father, but he's in this on the same basis as you
are, or I'm out of it,” she declared. “I thought you might suggest
something like this; that's one reason I asked you to have him come.
Another reason--and this is something I forgot to tell you awhile
ago--when I broke down and confessed everything to Dick Sherwood, I told
Dick that Old Jimmie was really my guardian; and we both agreed that
he should be present as a witness to any agreement, and to protect my
interests. Still another reason is that since we had to work so fast,
the thing to do was to split the money on the spot in three ways, and
then each of us shoot off in a different direction to-night before any
bad luck had a chance to break. In fact, Barney, this present minute is
when you and I say our good-byes.”
He forgot his scheme to defraud Old Jimmie in the far greater concern
aroused by her last words. He leaned across the table and tried to take
her hand, an attempt she deftly thwarted.
“But listen, Maggie,” he asked with husky eagerness, “you and I are
going to have an understanding to join up with each other soon, aren't
we? You know what I mean--belong to each other. You know how I feel
about: you!”
This was the principal point Maggie had been maneuvering toward. Before
her was the most difficult scene of the many which she had planned, on
her successful management of which the success of everything seemed to
depend. Within she was palpitant with the strain and suspense of it
all; but on Barney she held cool, appraising eyes. In this splendid
composure, her momentary withdrawal from him, she seemed to Barney more
beautiful, more desirable, more indispensable, than at any time since he
had discovered back at the Duchess's that Maggie was a find.
“Of course I know exactly what you mean, Barney,” she responded with
deliberation, bewitchingly alluring in her air of superiority. “I've
known for a long time you and I would have to have a real talk. Are you
ready for a straight talk now?”
“As straight as you can talk it!”
“I'll probably fall for some man and marry him. Every woman does. But if
I marry him, it'll be because I love him. But my marrying a man doesn't
mean I'm going to go into business with him. I'm not going to mix love
with business--not unless the man is the right sort of man. Of course it
would be better if the man I marry and the man I take on as a business
partner were the same man--but I'm not going to take any risks. You
understand me so far.”
“Surest thing you know. And every word you've said proves that your head
isn't just something to look pretty with. Let me slip this over to you
right at the start--I'm the right sort of man!”
“That's exactly what I want to find out,” she continued, with her
deliberation, with the air of sitting secure upon the highest level.
“I know now what I can do. I've proved it. Now I'm going right ahead
putting over big things. You once told me I had it in me to be the best
ever--and I now know I can be. I know I've got to tie up with a man,
and the man has got to be just as good in his way as I am in mine.
Right there's where I'm in doubt about you. I said I was going to talk
straight--and I'm handing it to you straight. I don't know how good you
are.”
“You mean you think I'm not big enough to work with you?”
“I mean exactly what I said. I said that I didn't really know how good
you are, and that I wasn't going to tie up with any man except the
best in the business. You've hinted now and then at a lot of big things
you've put across and how strong you were in certain quarters where it
paid to be strong--but I really know mighty little about you, Barney.
This present job hasn't required you to do anything special, and all
the really hard work I've done myself. Of course I know you are a good
dancer, and clever with the ladies, and know how to pick up a sucker
and string him along. But that's everything I do know. And, there are
hundreds of men who are good at these things. The man I tie up with
has got to be good at a lot of other things--and I've got to know he's
good!”
“Good at what other things, Maggie?” he asked with suppressed eagerness.
“He's got to be good at putting over all kinds of situations. I don't
care how he does it. So clever at putting things over that no one ever
guesses he's the man who did it. And he's got to be able to give me
protection. You know what I mean. A woman in the game I'm going in for
is absolutely through, as far as doing anything big is concerned, the