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 not going to go straight. You're going to string along with Barney and Old Jimmie and the rest of the bunch—we'll protect you—and you're going to slip us tips when something big is about to be pulled off.”
Larry, experienced with police methods though he was, could hardly believe this thing which was being proposed to him, Larry Brainard. But he controlled himself.
“If I get you, Chief, you are suggesting that I become a police stool?”
“Exactly. We'll never tip your hand. And any little thing you pull off on your own we'll not bother you about. And, besides, we'll slip you a little dough regular on the quiet.”
“And all you want me to do in exchange,” Larry asked quietly, “is to hand up my pals?”
“That's all.”
Larry found it required his all of strength to control himself; but he did.
“There are only three small objections to your proposition, Chief.”
“Yes?”
“The first is, I shall not be a stool.”
“What's that?”
“And the second is, I wouldn't squeal on a pal to you even if I were a crook. And the third is what I said in the beginning: I'm not going to be a crook.”
Barlow's squat, powerful figure arose menacingly. Casey also stood up.
“I tell you you ARE going to be a crook!” Barlow's big fist crashed down on his desk in a tremendous exclamation point. “And you're going to work for me exactly as I tell you!”
“I have already given you my final word,” said Larry.
“You—you—” Barlow almost choked at this quiet defiance. His face turned red, his breath came in a fluttering snarl, his powerful shoulders hunched up as if he were about to strike. But he held back his physical blows.
“That's your ultimatum?”
“If you care to call it so—yes.”
“Then here's mine! I told you I was holding back my high cards. Either you do as I say, and work with Gavegan and Casey, or you'll not be able to hold a job in New York! My men will see to that. And here's another high card. You do as I've said, or I'll hang some charge on you, one that'll stick, and back up the river you'll go for another stretch! There's an ultimatum for you to think about!”
It certainly was. Larry gazed into the harsh, glaring face, set in fierce determination. He knew that Barlow, as part of his policy, loved to break down the spirit of criminals; and he knew that nothing so roused Barlow as opposition from a man he considered in his power. Close beside the Chief he saw the gloating, malignant face of Gavegan; Casey, who had been restless since the beginning of the scene, had moved to the window and was gazing down into Center Street.
For a moment Larry did not reply. Barlow mistook Larry's silence for wavering, or the beginning of an inclination to yield.
“You turn that over in your noodle,” Barlow drove on. “You're going to go crooked, anyhow, so you might as well go crooked in the only way that's safe for you. I'm going to have Gavegan and Casey watch you, and if in the next few days you don't begin to string along with Barney and Old Jimmie and that bunch, and if you don't get me word that your answer to my proposition is 'yes,' hell's going to fall on you! Now get out of here!”
Larry got out. He was liquid lava of rage inside; but he had had enough to do with police power to know that it would help him not at all to permit an eruption against a police official while he was in the very heart of the police stronghold.
He walked back toward his own street in a fury, beneath which was subconsciously an element of uneasiness: an uneasiness which would have been instantly roused to caution had he known that Barney Palmer had this hour and more been following him in a taxicab, and that across the street from the car's window Barney's sharp face had watched him enter Police Headquarters and had watched him emerge.
Home reached, Larry briefly recounted his experience at Headquarters to Hunt and the Duchess. The painter whistled; the Duchess blinked and said nothing at all.
“Maggie was more right than she knew when she first said you were facing a tough proposition!” exclaimed Hunt. “Believe me, young fellow, you're certainly up against it!”
“Can you beat it for irony!” said Larry, pacing the floor. “A man wants to go straight. His pals ask him to be a crook, and are sore because he won't be a crook. The police ask him to be a crook, and threaten him because he doesn't want to be a crook. Some situation!”
“Some situation!” repeated Hunt. “What're you going to do?”
“Do?” Larry halted, his face set with defiant determination. “I'm going to keep on doing exactly what I've been doing! And they can all go to hell!”
For several days nothing seemed to be happening, though Larry had a sense that unknown forces were gathering on distant isothermal lines and bad weather was bearing down upon him. During these days, trying to ignore that formless trouble, he gave himself with a most rigid determination to his new routine—the routine which he counted on to help him into the way of great things.
Every day he saw Maggie; sometimes he was in her company for an hour or more. He had the natural hunger of a young man to talk to a young woman; and, moreover, it is a severe strain for a man to be living under the same roof with the girl he loves and not to be on terms of friendship with her. But Maggie maintained her aloofness. She spoke only when she was pressed into it, and her speech was usually no more than a “yes” or a “no,” or a flashing phrase of disdain.
At times Larry had the feeling that, for all her repression, Maggie would have been glad to be more free with him. And he knew enough of human nature not to be too disheartened by her attitude. Had he been a nonentity to her, she would have ignored him. Her very insults were proof that he was a positive personality with real significance in her life. And so he counseled himself to have patience and await a thawing or an awaking. Besides, he kept repeating to himself, there would be small chance of effecting a conversion in this militant young orthodoxist of cynicism until he had proved the soundness of contrary views by his own established success.
And thus the days drifted by. But on the fifth day after his interview with Barlow things began to happen. First of all, he noticed in a morning paper that Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt, members of his old outfit and suggested by Old Jimmie as participants in his proposed new enterprise, had just been arrested by Gavegan and Casey on the charge of alleged connection with the sale of fraudulent mining stock.
Second, on his return at the end of the afternoon, he saw standing before the house a taxicab with a trunk beside the chauffeur. In the musty museum of a room behind the pawnshop he found Hunt and the Duchess and Old Jimmie and Barney; and also Maggie, coming down the stairway, hat and coat on and carrying a suitcase. A sharp pain throbbed through him as he recognized the significance of Maggie's hat and coat and baggage.
“Maggie—you're going away?” he exclaimed.
“Yes.”
She had paused at the foot of the stairway, and at sight of him had gone a little pale and wide-eyed. But in an instant she had recovered her accustomed flair; there came a proud lift to her head, a flash of scorn into her dark eyes.
“At last I'm leaving this street for good,” she said. “I told you that some day I was going out into the world and do big things. The time's come—I'm graduated—I'm going to begin real work. And I'm going to succeed—you see!”
“Maggie!” he breathed. Then impulsively he started toward her authoritatively. “Maggie, I'm not going to let you do anything of the sort!”
But swiftly Barney had stepped in between them, Old Jimmie just behind him.
“Keep out of this!” Barney snapped at Larry, a reddish blaze in his eyes. “Maggie's going away and you can't stop her. D'you think her father is going to let her stay down here any longer, where you can spout your preaching at her!—and you all the time a stool and a squealer!”
“What's that?” cried Larry.
“I called you a stool!” repeated the malignantly exultant Barney, alert for any move on the part of the suddenly tensed Larry. “And you are a stool! Didn't I see you myself go into Headquarters with Casey and Gavegan where you sold yourself to Chief Barlow!”
“Why, you damned—”
Even before he spoke Larry launched a furious swing straight from the hip at Barney's twisted face. But Barney had been expecting exactly that, and was even the quicker. He caught Larry's wrist before it was fairly started, and thrust a dull-hued automatic into Larry's stomach.
“Behave; damn you,” gritted Barney, “or I'll blow your damned guts out! No—go ahead and try to hit me. I'd like nothing better than to kill you, you rat, and have a good plea of self-defense!”
Larry let his hands unclench and fall to his sides. “You've got the drop on me, Barney—but you're a liar.”
“You bet I got the drop on you! And not only with my gun. I've got it on you about being a stool. Everybody knows you are a stool. And what's more, they know you are a squealer!”
“A squealer!” Larry stiffened again.
“A stool and a squealer!” Barney fairly hurled at Larry these two most despised epithets of his world. “You've done your job swell as a stool, and squealed on Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt and turned them up for the police!”
“You believe I had anything to do with their arrest?” exclaimed Larry.
Barney laughed in his derision.
“Of course we believe it,” put in Old Jimmie, his seamed, cunning face now ruthlessly hard. “And what's more, we know it!”
“And what's still more,” Barney taunted, “Maggie believes it, too!”
Larry turned to Maggie. Her face was now drawn, with staring eyes.
“Maggie—do you believe it?” he demanded.
For a moment she neither spoke nor moved. Then slowly she nodded.
“But, Maggie,” he protested, “I didn't do it! Barlow did ask me to be a stool, but I turned him down! Aside from that, I know no more of this than you do!”
“Of course you'd deny it—we were waiting for that,” sneered Barney. “Jimmie, we've wasted enough time here. Take Maggie's bag and let's be moving on.”
Old Jimmie picked up Maggie's suitcase, and slipping a hand through her arm led her across the room. She did not even say good-bye to Hunt or the Duchess, or even glance at them; but went out silently, her drawn, staring look on Larry alone.
Barney backed after them, his automatic still held in readiness. “I'm letting you down damned easy, Brainard,” he said, hate glittering in his eyes. “But there's some who won't be so nice!”
With that he closed the door. Until that moment both Hunt and the Duchess had said nothing. Now the Duchess spoke up:
“I'm glad they've taken Maggie away, Larry. I've seen the way you've come to feel about her, and she's not the right sort for you.”
But Larry was still too dazed by the way in which Maggie had walked out of his life to make any response.
“But there's a lot in what Barney said about there being some who wouldn't be easy on you,” continued the Duchess. “That word had been brought me before Barney showed up. So I had this ready for you.”
From a slit pocket in her baggy skirt the Duchess drew out a pistol and handed it to Larry.
“What's this for?” Larry asked.
“I was told that word had gone out to the Ginger Buck Gang to get you,” answered the Duchess. “Barney has some secret connection with the Ginger Bucks. His saying that you were a stool and a squealer is not the only thing he's got against you; he's jealous of you on account of everything—especially Maggie. So you'll need that gun.”
“What's this I've fallen into the middle of?” exclaimed Hunt. “A Kentucky feud?”
“It's very easy to understand when you know the code,” Larry explained grimly. “Down here when an outfit thinks one of its members has squealed on them, it's their duty to be always on the watch for their chance to finish him off. I'm to be finished off—that's all.”
“Say, young fellow, the life of a straight crook doesn't seem to be getting much simpler! Why, man, you hardly dare to stir from the house! What are you going to do?”
“Going to go around my business, always with the pleasant anticipation of a bullet in my back when some fellow thinks it safe for him to shoot.”
The three of them discussed this latest development over their dinner, which they had together up in Hunt's studio. But despite all their talk of his danger, a very real and near danger, Larry's mind was more upon Maggie who had thus suddenly been wrenched out of his life. He remembered her excited, boastful talk of their first evening. Her period of schooling was indeed now over; she was now committed to her rosily imagined adventure, in which she saw herself as a splendid lady. And with Barney Palmer as her guiding influence!...
Dinner had been finished and Hunt was trying to give Larry such cheer as “Buck up, young fellow—you know the worst—there's nothing else that can happen,” when the lie direct was given to his phrases by heavy steps running up the stairway and the opening and closing of the door. There stood Officer Casey, heaving for breath.
Instinctively Larry drew his pistol. “Casey! What're you here for?”
“Get rid of that gat—don't be found with a gun on,” ordered Casey. “And beat it. You've got less than five minutes to make your get-away.”
“My get-away! What's up?”
“You haven't come across as the Chief ordered you to, and he's out to give you just what he said he would,” Casey said rapidly, his speech broken by panting. “There's been a stick-up, with assault that may be changed to attempted manslaughter, and the Chief has three men who swear you're the guilty party. It's a sure-fire case against you, Larry—and it'll mean five to ten years if you're caught. Gavegan and I got the order to arrest you. I've beat Gavegan to it so's to tip you off, but he's only a few minutes behind. Hurry, Larry! Only—only—”
Casey paused, gasping for his wind.
“Only what, Casey?”
“Only alibi me, Larry, by slipping over a haymaker on me like you did on Gavegan. So's I can say I tried to get you, but you were too quick and knocked me cold. Quick! Only not too hard—I know how to play possum.”
Larry handed the pistol to Hunt. “Casey, you're a real scout! Thanks!” He grasped Casey's hand, then swiftly relaxed his grip. “Ready?”
“Fire,” said Casey.
Larry held his open left hand close to Casey's jaw, and drove his right fist into his palm with a thudding smack. Casey went sprawling to the floor, and lay there loosely, with mouth agape, in perfect simulation of a man who has been knocked out.
Larry turned quickly. “You two will testify that I beat Casey up and then made my escape?”
“Sure, I'll testify to anything for the sake of a good old goat like Casey!” cried Hunt. “But hurry, boy—beat it!”
The Duchess held out Larry's hat to him, and thrust into his coat pocket a roll of bills which had come from her capacious skirt. “Hurry, Larry—and be careful—for you're all I've got.”
Impulsively Larry stooped and kissed the thin, shriveled lips of his grandmother—the first kiss he had ever given her. Then he turned and ran down the stairway, Hunt just behind him. He turned out the light in the back room, and called to Old Isaac to darken the pawnshop proper. He was going forth with two forces in arms against him, the police and his pals, and he had no desire to be a shining mark for either or both by stepping through a lighted doorway.
“Larry, my son, you're all right!” said Hunt, gripping his hand in the darkness. “Listen, boy: if ever you're trapped and can get to a telephone, call Plaza nine-double-o-one and say 'Benvenuto Cellini.'”
“All right.”
“Remember, you're to say 'Benvenuto Cellini,' and the telephone is Plaza nine-double-o-one. Luck to you!” Again they gripped hands. Then Larry slipped through the darkened doorway into whatever might lie beyond.
A misting rain was being swirled about by a temperish wind as Larry came out into the little street. Down toward the river the one gaslight glowed faintly like an expiring nebula; all the little shops were closed; home lights gleamed behind the curtained windows which the storm had closed; so that the street was now a little canyon of uncertain shadows.
Larry had not needed to think to know that Gavegan would be making his vindictive approach from the westerly regions where lay Headquarters. So, keeping in the deeper shadows close to the building, Larry took the eastern course of the street, remembering in a flash a skiff he had seen tethered to a scow moored to the pier which stretched like a pointer finger from the little Square. As yet he had no plan beyond the necessity of the present moment, which was flight. Could he but make that skiff unseen and cast off, he would have time, in the brief sanctuary which the black river would afford him, to formulate the wisest procedure his predicament permitted him.
As he came near that smothered glow-worm of a street-lamp it assumed for him the betraying glare of a huge spot-light. But it had to be passed to gain the skiff; and with collar turned up and hat-brim pulled down and head hunched low, he entered the dim sphere of betrayal, walked under its penny's-worth of flame, and glided toward the shadows beyond, his eyes straining with the preternatural keenness of the hunted at every stoop and doorway before him.
He was just passing out of the sphere of mist-light—the lamp being now at his back helped him—when he saw three vague figures lurking half a dozen paces ahead of him. His brain registered these vague figures with the instantaneity of a snapshot camera at full noon. They were mere shadows; but the farther of the three seemed to be Barney Palmer—he was not sure; but of the identity of the other two there was no doubt: “Little Mick” and “Lefty Ed,” both members high in the councils of the Ginger Bucks, and either of whose services as a killer could be purchased for a hundred dollars or a paper of cocaine, depending upon which at the moment there was felt the greater need.
In the very instant that he saw, Larry doubled about and ran at full speed back up the street. Two shots rang out; Larry could not tell whether they were fired by Little Mick or Lefty Ed or Barney Palmer—that is, if the third man really were Barney. Again two shots were fired, then came the sound of pursuing feet. Luckily not one of the bullets had touched Larry; for the New York professional gunman is the premier bad shot of all the world, and cannot count upon his marksmanship, unless he can get his weapon solidly anchored against his man, or can sneak around to the rear and pot his unsuspecting victim in the back.
As Larry neared the pawnshop with the intention of making his escape through the western stretch of the street, he saw that Old Isaac has switched on the lights; and he also saw Officer Gavegan bearing down in his direction. They sighted each other in the same instant, and Gavegan let out a roar and started for him.
Caught between two opposing forces, Larry again had no time to plan. Rather, there was nothing he could plan, for only one way was open to him. He dashed into the pawnshop and into the back room. At the Duchess's desk Hunt was scribbling at furious speed.
“I'm caught, Hunt—Gavegan's coming,” he gasped, and ran up the stairs, Hunt following and stuffing his scribblings into a pocket. As Larry passed the open studio door he saw Casey sitting up. “Down on the floor with you, Casey! Hunt, work over him to bring him to—and stall Gavegan for a while if you can.”
With that Larry sprang to a ladder at the end of the little hall, ran up it, unhooked and pushed up the trap, scrambled through upon the roof, and pushed the trap back into place.
Fortune, or rather the well-wishing wits of friends below, gave Larry a few precious moments more than he had counted on. He was barely out on the rain-greased tin roof, with the trap down, when Gavegan came thumping up the stairs and into the studio. At sight of the recumbent Casey, head limply on Hunt's knees, and his loose face being laved by a wet towel in Hunt's hands, Gavegan let out another roar:
“Hell's bells! What the hell's this mean?”
“I tried to nab Brainard,” Casey mumbled feebly, “and he knocked me out cold—the same as he did you, Gavegan.”
“Hell!” snorted Gavegan, his wrath increased by this reference. “You there”—to Hunt and the Duchess—“where'd Brainard go? He's in this house some place!”
“I don't know,” said Hunt.
“Yes, you do! Leave that boob side-kick of mine sleep it off, and help me find Brainard or you'll feel my boot!”
The big painter stood up facing the big detective and his left hand gripped the latter's wrist and his right closed upon the detective's throat just as it had closed upon the lean throat of Old Jimmie on the day of Larry's return—only now there was nothing playful in the noose of that big hand. He shook Gavegan as he might have shaken a pillow, with a thumb thrusting painfully in beneath Gavegan's ear.
“I've done nothing, and that bully stuff doesn't go with me!” he fairly spat into Gavegan's face. “You talk to me like a gentleman and apologize, or I'll throw you out of the window and let your head bounce off one of its brother cobblestones below!”
Gavegan choked out an apology, whereat Hunt flung him from him. The detective, glowering at the other, pulled aside curtains, peered into corners; then made furious and fruitless search of the rooms below, bringing up at last at Maggie's door, which the Duchess had slipped ahead of him and locked. When he demanded the key, the Duchess told him of Maggie's departure and her carrying the key with her. It was a solid door, with strong lock and hinges; and two minutes of Gavegan's battering shoulders were required to make it yield entrance. Not till he found the room empty did Gavegan think of the trap and the roof.
Larry made good use of these few extra minutes granted him. Whatever he was to do he realized he must do it quickly. Not for long would the forces arrayed against him be small in number; Gavegan, though beaten at the outset, would send out an alarm that would arouse the police of the city—and in their own degree the gangsters would do the same. During his weeks of freedom Larry had unconsciously studied the layout of the neighborhood, his old instincts at work. The subconscious knowledge thus gained was of instant value. He hurried along the slippery roofs, taking care not to trip over the dividing walls, and came to the rear edge of a roof where he had marked a fire-escape with an unusually broad upper landing. He could discern the faint outlines of this; and hanging to the gutter he dropped to the fire-escape, and a moment later he was down in the back yard; and yet two moments later he was over two fences and going through a rabbit's burrow of a passageway that went beneath a house into the street behind his own.
He did not pause to reconnoiter. Time was of the essence of his safety, risks had to be taken. He plunged out of his hole—around the first corner—around the next—and thus wove in and out, working westward, till at last, on turning a corner into a lighted street, he saw possible relief in two stray taxicabs before a little East Side restaurant, one of which was just leaving.
“Taxi!” he called breathlessly.
The chauffeur of the moving car swung back beside the curb and opened the door. But even as he started to enter he saw Little Mick and Lefty Ed turn into the street behind him. However, the brightness of this street ill-accorded with the anonymity with which their art is most safely and profitably practiced, so Larry got in without a bullet flicking at him.
“Forty-Second Street and Broadway,” he called to the chauffeur as he closed the door.
The car started off. Looking back through the little window he saw Lefty Ed enter the other taxicab, and saw Little Mick standing on the curb. He understood. Little Mick was to send out the alarm, while Lefty was to follow the trail.
Let Lefty follow. At least Larry now had a few minutes to consider some plan which should look beyond the safety of the immediate moment. He was well-dressed, albeit somewhat wet and soiled; he had money in his pockets. What should he do?
Yes, what should he do? The more he considered it the more ineluctable did his situation become. By now Gavegan had sent out his alarm; within a few moments every policeman on duty would have instructions to watch for him. He might escape for the time, at least, these allies of his one-time pals by going to a hotel and taking a room there; but to walk into a hotel would be to walk into arrest. On the other hand, he might evade the police if he sought refuge in one of his old haunts, or perhaps with old Bronson; but then his angered pals knew of these haunts, and to enter one of them would be to offer himself freely to their vengeance.
There were other cities—but then how was he to get to them? He saw Manhattan for what it was to a man who was a fugitive from justice and injustice: an island, a trap, with only a few outlets and inlets for its millions: two railway stations—a few ferries—a few bridges—a few tunnels: and at every one of them policemen watching for him. He could not leave New York. And yet how in God's name was he to stay here?
He thought of Maggie. So she wanted the life of dazzling, excitement, of brilliant adventure, did she? He wondered how she would like a little of the real thing—such as this?
As he neared Forty-Second Street he still was without definite plan which would guarantee him safety, and there was Lefty hanging on doggedly. An idea came which would at least extend his respite and give him more time for thought. He opened the door of his cab and thrust a ten-dollar note into the instinctively ready hand of his driver.
“Keep the change—and give me a swing once around Central Park, slowing down on those hilly turns on the west side.”
“I gotcha.”
The car entered the park at the Plaza and sped up the shining, almost empty drive. Larry kept watch, now on the trailing Lefty, now on the best chance for execution of his idea—all the way up the east side and around the turn at the north end. As the car, now south-bound, swung up the hill near One Hundred and Fifth Street, at whose crest there is a sharp curve with thick-growing, overhanging trees, Larry opened the right door and said:
“Show me a little speed, driver, as soon as you pass this curve!”
“I gotcha,” replied the chauffeur.
The slowing car hugged the inside of the sharp turn, Larry holding the door open and waiting his moment. The instant the taxi made the curve Lefty's car was cut from view; and that instant Larry sprang from the running-board, slamming the door behind him, landed on soft earth and scuttled in among the trees. Crouching in the shadows he saw his car speed away as per his orders, and the moment after he saw Lefty's car, evidently taken by surprise by this obvious attempt at escape, leap forward in hot pursuit.
Larry slipped farther in among the trees and sat down, his back against a tree. This was better. For the time he was safe.
He drew a long breath. Then for a moment what he had just been through this last hour came back to him in an almost amusing light: as something grotesquely impossible—much like those helter-skelter, utterly unreal chases which, with slight variations of personalities and costumes, were the chief plots for the motion-picture drama in its crude childhood. But though there seemed a likeness, there was a tremendous difference. For this was real! Every one was in earnest!
Again he thought of Maggie. What would she think, what would be her attitude, if she knew the truth about him?—the truth about those she had gone with and the life she had gone into? Would she be inclined toward HIM, would she help him?...
Again he thought of what he should do. Now that he commanded a composure which had not been his during the stress of his flight, he examined every aspect with greater care. But the conclusions of composure were the same as those of excitement. He could not gain entrance to one of the great hotels and remain in his room, unidentified among its thousands of strangers; he could not find asylum in one of his old haunts; he dared not try to leave Manhattan. He was a prisoner, whose only privilege was a larger but most uncertain liberty.
And that liberty was becoming penetratingly uncomfortable. An hour had passed, the ground on which he sat was wet and cold, and the misty air was assuming a distressing kinship with departed winter and was making shivering assaults upon his bones. At the best, he realized, he could not hope to remain secure in this cultivated wilderness beyond daylight. With the coming of morning he would certainly be the prey of either his pals or the police. And if they did not beat him from his hiding, plain mortal hunger would drive him out into the open streets. If he was to do anything at all, he must do it while he still had the moderate protection of the night.
And then for the first time there came to him remembrance of Hunt's rapid injunction, given him in the hurly-burly of escape when no thoughts could impress the upper surface of his mind save those of the immediate moment. “If you're trapped, call Plaza nine-double-o-one and say 'Benvenuto Cellini.'”
Larry had no idea what that swift instruction might be about. And the chance seemed a slender, fantastical one, even if he could safely get to a public telephone. But it seemed his only chance.
He arose, and, keeping as much as he could to the wilder regions of the park, and making the utmost use of shadows when he had to cross a path or a drive, he stole southward. He remembered a drug-store at Eighty-Fourth Street and Columbus Avenue, peculiarly suited to his purpose, for it had a side entrance on Eighty-Fourth Street and was in a neighborhood where policemen were infrequent.
Fortune favored him. At length he reached Eighty-Fourth Street and peered over the wall. Central Park West was practically empty of automobiles, for the theaters had not yet discharged their crowds and no policeman was in sight. He vaulted the wall; a minute later he was in a booth in the drug-store, had dropped his nickel in the slot, and was asking for Plaza nine-double-o-one.
“Hello, sir!” responded the very correct voice of a man.
“Benvenuto Cellini,” said Larry.
“Hold the wire, sir,” said the voice.
Larry held the wire, wondering. After a moment the same correct voice asked where Larry was speaking from. Larry gave the exact information.
“Stay right in the booth, and keep on talking; say anything you like; the wire here will be kept open,” continued the voice. “We'll not keep you waiting long, sir.”
The voice ceased. Larry began to chat about topics of the day, about invented friends and engagements, well knowing that his stream of talk was not being heard unless Central was “listening in”; and knowing also that, to any one looking into the glass door of his booth, he was giving a most unsuspicious appearance of a busy man. And while he talked, his wonder grew. What was about to happen? What was this Benvenuto Cellini business all about?
He had been talking for fifteen minutes or more when the glass door of the booth was opened from without and a man's voice remarked:
“When you are through, sir, we will be going.”
The voice was the same he had heard over the wire. Larry hung up and followed the man out the side door, noting only that he had a lean, respectful face. At the curb stood a limousine, the door of which was opened by the man for Larry. Larry stepped in.
“Are you followed, sir?” inquired the man.
“I don't know.”
“We'd better make certain. If you are, we'll lose them, sir. We'll stop somewhere and change our license plates again.”
Instead of getting into the unlighted body with him, as Larry had expected, the man closed the door, mounted to the seat beside the chauffeur, and the car shot west and turned up Riverside Drive.
One may break the speed laws in New York if one has the speed, and if one has the ability to get away with it. This car had both. Never before had Larry driven so rapidly within New York City limits; he knew this, that any trailing taxicab would be lost behind. At Two-Hundred-and-Forty-Fifth Street the car swung into Van Cortland Park, and switched off all lights. Two minutes later they halted in a dark stretch of one of the by-roads of the Park.
“We'll be stopping only a minute, sir, to put on our right number plates,” the man opened the door to explain.
Within the minute they were away again, now proceeding more leisurely, in the easy manner of a private car going about its private business—though the interior of the car was discreetly dark and Larry huddled discreetly into a corner. Thus they drove over the Grand Boulevards and recrossed the Harlem River and presently drew up in front of a great apartment house in Park Avenue.
The man opened the door. “Walk right in, sir, as though you belong here. The doorman and the elevatorman are prepared.”
They might be prepared, but Larry certainly was not; and he shot up the elevator to the top floor with mounting bewilderment. The man unlocked the door of an apartment, ushered Larry in, took his wet hat, then ushered the dazed Larry through the corner of a dim-lit drawing-room and through another door.
“You are to wait here, sir,” said the man, and quietly withdrew.
Larry looked about him. He took in but a few details, but he knew enough about the better fittings of life to realize that he was in the presence of both money and the best of taste. He noted the log fire in the broad fireplace, comfortable chairs, the imported rugs on the gleaming floor, the shelves of books which climbed to the ceiling, a quaint writing-desk in one corner which seemed to belong to another country and another century, but which was perfectly at home in this room.
On the desk he saw standing a leather-framed photograph which seemed familiar. He crossed and picked it up. Indeed it was familiar! It was a photograph of Hunt: of Hunt, not in the shabby, shapeless garments he wore down at the Duchess's, but Hunt accoutered as might be a man accustomed to such a room as this—though in this picture there was the same strong chin, the same belligerent good-natured eyes.
Now how and where did that impecunious, rough-neck painter fit into—
But the dazed question Larry was asking was interrupted by a voice from the door—the thick voice of a man:
“Who the hell 'r' you?”
Larry whirled about. In the doorway stood a tall, bellicose young gentleman of perhaps twenty-four or five, in evening dress, flushed of face, holding unsteadily to the door-jamb.
“I beg your pardon,” said Larry.
“'N' what the hell you doin' here?” continued the belligerent young gentleman.
“I'd be obliged to you if you could tell me,” said Larry.
“Tryin' to stall, 'r' you,” declared the young gentleman with a scowling profundity. “No go. Got to come out your corner 'n' fight. 'N' I'm goin' lick you.”
The young man crossed unsteadily to Larry and took a fighting pose.
“Put 'em up!” he ordered.
This was certainly a night of strange adventure, thought Larry. His wild escape—his coming to this unknown place—and now this befuddled young fellow intent upon battle with him.
“Let's fight to-morrow,” Larry suggested soothingly.
“Put 'em up!” ordered the other. “If you don't know what you're doin' here, I'll show you what you're doin' here!”
But he was not to show Larry, for while he was uttering his last words, trying to steady himself in a crouch for the delivery of a blow, a voice sounded sharply from the doorway—a woman's voice:
“Dick!”
The young man slowly turned. But Larry had seen her first. He had no chance to take her in, that first moment, beyond noting that she was slender and young and exquisitely gowned, for she swept straight across to them.
“Dick, you're drunk again!” she exclaimed.
“Wrong, sis,” he corrected in an injured tone. “It's same drunk.”
“Dick, you go to bed!”
“Now, sis—”
“You go to bed!”
The young man wavered before her commanding gaze. “Jus's you say—jus's you say,” he mumbled, and went unsteadily toward the door.
The young woman watched him out, and then turned her troubled face back to Larry. “I'm sorry Dick behaved to you as he did.”
And then before Larry could make answer, her clouded look was gone. “So you're here at last, Mr. Brainard.” She held her hand out, smiling a smile that by some magic seemed to envelop him within an immediate friendship.
“I'm Miss Sherwood.” He noted that the slender, tapering hand had almost a man's strength of grip. “You needn't tell me anything about yourself,” she added, “for I already know a lot—all I need to know: about you—and about Maggie Carlisle. You see an hour ago a messenger brought me a long letter he'd written about you.” And she nodded to the photograph Larry was still holding.
“You—you know him?” Larry stammered.
She answered with a whimsical smile: “Yes. Isn't he a grand, foolish old dear? He's such a roistering, bragging personage that I've named him Benvenuto Cellini—though he's neither liar nor thief. He must have told you what I called him.”
So that explained this password of “Benvenuto Cellini”! “No, he didn't explain anything. There was no time.”
“I don't know where he is,” she continued; “please don't tell me. I don't want to know until he wants me to know.”
Larry had been making a swift appraisal of her. She was perhaps thirty, fair, with golden-brown hair held in place by a large comb of wrought gold, with violet-blue eyes, wearing a low-cut gown of violet chiffon velvet and dull gold shoes. Larry's instinct told him that here was a patrician, a thoroughbred: with poise, with a knowledge of the world, with whimsical humor, with a kindly understanding of people, with steel in her, and with a smiling readiness for almost any situation.
“I think no one will find you—at least for the present,” her pleasantly modulated voice continued. “There are so many things I want to talk over with you. Perhaps I can help about Maggie. I hope you don't mind my talking about her.” Larry could not imagine any one taking offense at anything this brilliant apparition might possibly say. “But we'll put off our talk until to-morrow. It's late, and you're wet and cold, and besides, my aunt is having one of her bad spells and thinks she needs me. Judkins will see to you. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Larry.
She moved gracefully out—almost floated, Larry would have said. The next moment the man was with him who had been his escort here, and led Larry into a spacious bedroom with bath attached. Ten minutes later Judkins made his exit, carrying Larry's outer clothes; and another ten minutes later, after a hot bath, and garbed in silk pajamas which Judkins had produced, Larry was in the softest and freshest bed that had ever held him.
But sleep did not come to Larry for a long time. He lay wondering about this golden-haired, poiseful Miss Sherwood. She was undoubtedly the woman in the back of Hunt's life. And he wondered about Hunt—who he really was—what had really driven him into this strange exile. And he wondered about Maggie—what she might be doing—what from this strange new vantage-point he might do for her and with her. And he wondered how his own complex situation was going to work itself out.
And still wondering, Larry at length fell asleep.