Children of the Whirlwind
work, or rather her day of intensive schooling for her greater life. On
the night of his return from Chicago, which was a week after his break
with Larry, Barney reported to take Maggie home. He was in swagger
evening clothes and he asked the starter for a taxi; with an almost
lordly air and for the service of a white-gloved gesture to a chauffeur,
he carelessly handed the starter (who, by the way, was a richer man
than Barney) a crisp dollar bill. Barney was trying to make his best
impression.
“Seen much of that stiff, Larry Brainard?” he asked when the cab was
headed southward.
His tone, which he tried to make merely contemptuous, conveyed the deep
wrath which he still felt whenever his mind reverted to Larry. Maggie
reserved to herself the privilege of thinking of Larry just as she
pleased; but being the kind of girl she was, she could not help being
also a bit of a coquette.
“I didn't think he was such a stiff, Barney,” she said in an
irritatingly pleasant voice. “His prison clothes were bad, but now that
he's dressed right I think he looks awfully nice. You and father have
always said he looked the perfect swell.”
“See here--has he been talking to you?” Barney demanded savagely.
“A little. Yes, several times. In fact he said quite a lot that night
after you'd gone.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was not only going to go straight, but”--in her provocative,
teasing voice--“he was going to make me go straight.”
“What's that? Tell me just what he said!” demanded Barney, his wrath
suddenly flaring into furious jealousy.
Maggie told him in detail; in fact told him the scene in greater detail
and with a greater length than had been the actuality. Also she censored
the scene by omitting her own opposition to Larry's determination. She
enjoyed playing with Barney, the exercise of the power she had over
Barney's passions.
“And you stood for all that!” cried Barney. By this time they were far
down town. “You listen to me, Maggie: What I said to Larry's face that
night at the Duchess's still stands. I think he's yellow and has turned
against his old pals. I tell you what, I'm going to watch that guy!”
“You won't find it hard to watch him, Barney. Larry never hides
himself.”
“Oh, I'll watch him all right! And you, Maggie--why, you talk as though
you liked that line of talk he gave you!”
“Larry talks well--and I did like it, rather.”
“See here! You're not falling for him? You're not going to let him make
you go straight?”
Maggie certainly had no intention of letting any such thing come to
pass; but she could not check her innocent-toned baiting.
“How do I know what he'll make me do? He's clever and handsome, you
know.”
Barney gripped her shoulder fiercely. “Maggie--are you falling in love
with him?”
“How do I know, when--”
“Maggie!” He gripped her more tightly, and his phrases tumbled out
fiercely, rapidly. “You're not going to do anything of the sort! If he
goes straight--if you go straight--how can he ever help you? He can't!
And it will be your finish--the finish of all the big things we've
talked about. Listen: since Larry threw us down, I've taken hold of
things and will soon be ready to spring something big. Just a few days
now and you'll be out of that dirty street, and you'll be in swell
clothes doing swell work--and it will mean the best restaurants,
theaters, swell times!”
The car had turned into the narrow, cobbled street and had paused before
the Duchess's. Suddenly Barney caught her into his arms.
“And, Maggie, you're going to be mine! We'll have a nifty little place,
all right! You know I'm dippy about you....And, Maggie, I don't even
want you to go back in there where Larry Brainard is. Let's drive back
uptown and start in together now! To-night!”
It was not the fact that he had not suggested marriage which stirred
Maggie: men and women in Barney's class lived together, and sometimes
they were married and sometimes they were not. It was something else,
something of which she was not definitely conscious: but she felt no
such momentary thrill, no momentary, dazing surrender, as she had felt
the night when Larry had similarly held her.
“Stop that, Barney!” she gasped. “Let me go!” She struggled fiercely,
and then tore herself free.
“What's wrong with you?” panted Barney. “You're mine, ain't you?”
“You leave me alone! I'm going to get out!”
She had the door open, and was stepping out when he caught her sleeve.
But she pulled so determinedly that to have held her would have meant
nothing better than ripping the sleeve out of her coat. So he freed her
and followed her across the sidewalk to the Duchess's door.
“What's the idea?” he demanded, choking with fierce jealousy. “It's not
Larry, after all? You're not going to let him make you go straight?”
She had recovered her poise, and she replied banteringly:
“As I said, how can I tell what he's going to make me do?”
She heard him draw a deep, quivering breath between clenched teeth; but
she could not see how his figure tensed and how his face twisted into a
glower.
“Get this, Maggie: Larry Brainard is never going to be able to make you
do anything. You get that?”
“Yes, I get it, Barney; good-night,” she said lightly.
And Maggie slipped through the door and left Barney trembling in the
little street.
CHAPTER IX
Maggie, as she mounted to her room, was hardly conscious of the ring
of menace in Barney's voice; but once she was in bed, his tone and his
words came back to her and stirred a strange uneasiness in her mind.
Barney was angry; Barney was cunning; Barney would stop at nothing to
gain his ends. What might be behind his threatening words?
The next morning as she was coming in with milk for her breakfast
coffee, she met Larry in the Duchess's room behind the pawnshop. He
smilingly planted himself squarely in her way.
“See here, Maggie--aren't you ever going to speak to a fellow?”
Something within her surged up impelling her to tell him of Barney's
savage yet unformulated threat. The warning got as far as her tongue,
and there halted, struggling.
Her strange, fixed look startled Larry. “Why, what's the matter,
Maggie?” he exclaimed.
But her pride, her settled determination to unbend to him in no way and
to have no dealings with him, were stronger than her impulse; and the
struggling warning remained unuttered.
“Nothing's the matter,” she said, and brushed past him and hurried up
the stairway.
At times during the day, while tutoring with Mr. Bronson, Larry thought
of Maggie's strange look. And his mind was upon it late in the afternoon
when he entered the little street. But as he neared his grandmother's
house all such thought was banished by Detective Gavegan of the Central
Office stepping from the pawnshop and blocking the door with his big
figure. There was grim, triumphant purpose on the hard features of
Gavegan, conceited by nature and trained to harsh dominance by long rule
as a petty autocrat.
“Hello, Gavegan,” Larry greeted him pleasantly. “Gee, but you look
tickled! Did the Duchess give you a bigger loan than you expected on the
Carnegie medal you just hocked?”
“You'll soon be cuttin' out your line of comedy.” Gavegan slipped his
left arm through Larry's right. “You're comin' along with me, and you'd
better come quiet.”
Larry stiffened. “Come where?”
“Headquarters.”
“I haven't done a thing, Gavegan, and you know it! What do you want me
for?”
“Me and the Chief had a little talk about you,” leered Gavegan. “And now
the Chief wants to have a little personal talk with you. He asked me to
round you up and bring you in.”
“I've done nothing, and I'll not go!” Larry cried hotly.
“Oh, yes, you will!” Gavegan withdrew his right hand from his coat
pocket where it had been resting in readiness. In the hand, its thong
about his wrist, was a short leather-covered object filled with lead.
“I've got my orders, and you'll come peaceably, or--But I'd just as soon
you'd resist, for I owe you something for the punch you slipped over on
me the other night.”
Larry, taut with the desire to strike, gazed for a moment into the
glowering face of the detective. Gavegan, gripping his right arm, with
that bone-crushing slug-shot itching for instant use, was apparently
master in the present circumstances. But before Larry's quick mind had
decided upon a course, the door of the pawnshop opened and closed, and a
voice said sharply:
“Nothing doing on that rough stuff, Gavegan!” The speaker was now on
Larry's left side, a heavy-faced man in a black derby. “Larry, better be
a nice boy and come with us.”
“Oh, it's you, Casey!” said Larry. “If you say I've got to go, I'll
go--for you're one white copper, even if you do have Gavegan for a
partner. Come on. What're we standing here for?”
The trio made their way out of the narrow street, and after some fifteen
minutes of walking through the twisting byways of that part of the city,
they passed through the granite doorway at Headquarters and entered the
office of Deputy Commissioner Barlow, Chief of the Detective Bureau.
Barlow was talking over the telephone in a growling staccato, and the
three men sat down. After a moment Barlow banged the receiver upon its
hook, and turned upon them. He had a clenched, driving face, with small,
commanding eyes. It was his boast that he got results, that it was his
policy to make people do what you told 'em. He had no other code.
“Well, Brainard,” he snapped, “here you are again. What you up to now?”
“Going to try the straight game, Chief,” returned Larry.
“Don't try to put that old bunk over on me!”
“It's not bunk, Chief. It's the real stuff.”
“Cut it out, I say! Don't you suppose I had a clever bird like you
picked up the minute you landed in the city, and have had you covered
ever since? And if you are going straight, what about the session you
had with Barney Palmer and Old Jimmie Carlisle the very night you blew
in? And I'm on to this bluff of your going to that business institute.
So come across, Brainard! I've got your every move covered!”
“I've already come across, Chief,” replied Larry, trying to keep his
temper in the face of the other's bullying manner. “I told Barney and
Old Jimmie that I was through with the old game, and through with them
as pals at the old game--that's all there was to that meeting. I'm going
to that business institute for the same reason that every other person
goes there--to learn. That's all there is to the whole business, Chief:
I'm going to go straight.”
Chief Barlow, hunched forward, his undershot jaw clenched on a cigar
stub, regarded Larry steadily with his beady, autocratic eyes. Barlow
was trained to penetrate to the inside of men's minds, and he recognized
that Larry was in earnest.
“You mean you think you are going to go straight,” Barlow remarked
slowly and meaningly.
“I know I am going to go straight,” Larry returned evenly, meeting
squarely the gaze of the Chief of Detectives.
“Do you realize, young man,” Barlow continued in the same measured,
significant tone, “that whether you go straight, and how you go
straight, depends pretty much on me?”
“Mind making that a little clearer, Chief?”
“I'll show you part of my hand--just remember that I'm holding back my
high cards. I don't believe you're going to go straight, so we'll start
with the proposition that you're not going to run straight and work on
from there. You're clever, Brainard--I hand you that; and all the classy
crooks trust you. That's why I had picked you out for what I wanted long
before you left stir. Brainard, you're wise enough to know that some
of our best pinches come from tips handed us from the inside.
Brainard”--the slow voice had now become incisive, mandatory--“you're