All this while Maggie, and what he was to do about her, and how do it, was in Larry's mind. Even this work he was doing for Miss Sherwood, he was doing also for Maggie in the hope that in some unseen way it might lead him to her and help lead her to herself. There were difficulties enough between them, God knew; but of them all two were forever presenting themselves as foremost: first, he did not dare go openly to see her; and, second, even if he so dared he did not know where she was.
When he had been with the Sherwoods some three weeks Larry determined upon a preliminary measure. By this time he knew that the letters mailed from Chicago, according to the plan he had arranged with Miss Sherwood, had had their contemplated effect. He knew that he was supposed by his enemies to be in Chicago or some other Western point, and that New York was off its guard as far as he was concerned.
His preliminary measure was to discover, if possible, Maggie's whereabouts. The Duchess seemed to him the most likely source of information. He dared not write asking her for this, for he was certain her mail was still being scrutinized. The safest method would be to call at the pawnshop in person; the police, and his old friends, and the Ginger Bucks would expect anything else before they would expect him to return to his grandmother's. Of course he must use all precautions.
Incidentally he was prompted to this method by his desire to see his grandmother and Hunt. He had an idea or two which he had been mulling over that concerned the artist.
He chose a night when a steady, blowing rain had driven all but limousined and most necessitous traffic from the streets. The rain was excuse for a long raincoat with high collar which buttoned under his nose, and a cap which pulled down to his eyes, and an umbrella which masked him from every direct glance. Thus abetted and equipped he came, after a taxi ride and a walk, into his grandmother's street. It was as seemingly deserted as on that tumultuous night when he had left it; and on this occasion no figures sprang out of the cover of shadows, shooting and cursing. He had calculated correctly and unmolested he gained the pawnshop door, passed the solemn-eyed, incurious Isaac, and entered the room behind.
His grandmother sat over her accounts at her desk in a corner among her curios. Hunt, smoking a black pipe, was using his tireless right hand in a rapid sketch of her: another of those swift, few-stroked, vivid character notes which were about his studio by the hundreds. The Duchess saw Larry first; and she greeted him in the same unsurprised, emotionless manner as on the night he had come back from Sing Sing.
“Good-evening, Larry,” said she.
“Good-evening, grandmother,” he returned.
Hunt came to his feet, knocking over a chair in so doing, and gripped Larry's hand. “Hello—here's our wandering boy to-night! How are you, son?”
“First-rate, you old paint-slinger. And you?”
“Hitting all twelve cylinders and taking everything on high! But say, listen, youngster: how about your copper friends and those gun-toting schoolmates of yours?”
“Missed them so far.”
“Better keep on missing 'em.” Hunt regarded him intently for a moment, then asked abruptly: “Never heard one way or another—but did you use that telephone number I gave you?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Sherwood take care of you?”
“Yes.”
“Still there?”
“Yes.”
Again Hunt was silent for a moment. Larry expected questions about Miss Sherwood, for he knew the quality of the painter's interest. But Hunt seemed quite as determined to avoid any personal question relating to Miss Sherwood as she had been about personal questions relating to him; for his next remark was:
“Young fellow, still keeping all those commandments you wrote for yourself?”
“So far, my bucko.”
“Keep on keeping 'em, and write yourself a few more, and you'll have a brand-new decalogue. And we'll have a little Moses of our own. But in the meantime, son, what's the great idea of coming down here?”
“For one thing, I came to ask for a couple of your paintings.”
“My paintings!” Hunt regarded the other suspiciously. “What the hell you want my paintings for?”
“They might make good towels if I can scrape the paint off.”
“Aw, cut out the vaudeville stuff! I asked you what you wanted my paintings for? Give me a straight answer!”
“All right—here's your straight answer: I want your paintings to sell them.”
“Sell my paintings! Say, are you trying to say something still funnier?”
“I want them to sell them. Remember I once told you that I could sell them—that I could sell anything. Let me have them, and then just see.”
“You'd sure have to be able to sell anything to sell them!” A challenging glint had come into Hunt's eyes. “Young fellow, you're so damned fresh that if you had any dough I'd bet you five thousand, any odds you like, that you couldn't even GIVE one of the things away!”
“Loan me five thousand,” Larry returned evenly, “and I'll cover the bet with even money—it being understood that I'm to sell the picture at a price not less than the highest price you ever received for one of your 'pretty pictures' which you delight to curse and which made your fortune. Now bring down your pictures—or shut up!”
Hunt's jaw set. “Young fellow, I take that bet! And I'll not let you off, either—you'll have to pay it! Which pictures do you want?”
“That young Italian woman sitting on the curb nursing her baby—and any other picture you want to put with it.”
Hunt went clumping up the stairway. When he was out of earshot, the Duchess remarked quietly:
“What did you really come for, Larry?”
Larry was somewhat taken aback by his grandmother's penetration, but he did not try to evade the question nor the steady gaze of the old eyes.
“I thought you might know where Maggie is, and I came to ask.”
“That's what I thought.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
The old eyes were still steady upon him. “I don't know that I should tell you. I want you to get on—and the less you have to do with Maggie, the better for you.”
“I'd like to know, grandmother.”
The Duchess considered for a long space. “After all, you're of age—and you've got to decide what's best for yourself. I'll tell you. Maggie was here the other day—dressed simple—to get some letters she'd forgotten to take and which I couldn't find. We had a talk. Maggie is living at the Grantham under the name of Margaret Cameron. She has a suite there.”
“A suite at the Grantham!” exclaimed Larry, astounded. “Why, the Grantham is in the same class with the Ritzmore, where she used to work—or the Plaza! A suite at the Grantham!”
And then Larry gave a twitching start. “At the Grantham—alone?”
“Not alone—no. But it's not what just came into your mind. It's a woman that's with her; a hired companion. And they're doing everything on a swell scale.”
“What's Maggie up to?”
“She didn't tell me, except to say that the plan was a big one. She was all excited over it. If you want to know just what it is, ask Barney Palmer and Old Jimmie.”
“Barney and Old Jimmie!” ejaculated Larry. And then: “Barney and Old Jimmie—and a suite at the Grantham!”
At that moment Hunt came back down the stairway, carrying a roll wrapped in brown paper.
“Here you are, young fellow,” he announced. “De-mounted 'em so the junk would be easier to handle. The Dago mother you asked for—the second painting may be one you'd like to have for your own private gallery. I'm not going to let you get away with your bluff—and don't you forget it!... Duchess, don't you think he'd better beat it before Gavegan and his loving friends take a tumble to his presence and mess up the neighborhood?”
“Yes,” said the Duchess. “Good-night, Larry.”
“Good-night,” said he.
Mechanically he took the roll of paintings and slipped it under his raincoat; mechanically he shook hands; mechanically he got out of the pawnshop; mechanically he took all precautions in getting out of the little rain-driven street and in getting into a taxicab which he captured over near Cooper Institute. All his mind was upon what the Duchess had told him and upon a new idea which was throbbingly growing into a purpose. Maggie and Barney and Old Jimmie! Maggie in a suite at the Grantham!
What Larry now did, as he got into the taxi, he would have called footless and foolhardy an hour before, and at any other hour his judgment might have restrained him. But just now he seemed controlled by a force greater than smooth-running judgment—a composite of many forces: by sudden jealousy, by a sudden desire to shield Maggie, by a sudden desire to see her. So as he stepped into the taxi, he said:
“The Grantham—quick!”
The taxi went rocking up Fourth Avenue. But now that decision was made and he was headed toward Maggie, a little of judgment reasserted itself. It would not be safe for him to walk openly into the Grantham with a mouthful of questions. He did not know the number of Maggie's suite. And Maggie might not be in. So he revised his plan slightly. He called to his driver:
“Go to the Claridge first.”
Five minutes later the taxi was in Forty-Fourth Street and Larry was stepping out. Fortune favored him in one fact—or perhaps his subconscious mind had based his plan upon this fact: the time was half-past ten, the theaters still held their crowds, the streets were empty, the restaurants were practically unoccupied. He was incurring the minimum of risk.
“Wait for me,” he ordered the driver. “I'll be out in five minutes.”
In less than the half of the first of these minutes Larry had attained his first objective: the secluded telephone-room down behind the grill. It was unoccupied except for the telephone girl who was gazing raptly at the sorrowful, romantic, and very soiled pages of “St. Elmo.” The next moment she was gazing at something else—a five-dollar bill which Larry had slipped into the open book.
“That's to pay for a telephone call; just keep the change,” he said rapidly. “You're to do all the talking, and say just what I tell you.”
“I got you, general,” said the girl, emerging with alacrity from romance to reality. “Shoot.”
“Call up the Hotel Grantham—say you're a florist with an order to deliver some flowers direct to Miss Margaret Cameron—and ask for the number of her suite—and keep the wire open.”
The girl obeyed promptly. In less than a minute she was reporting to Larry:
“They say 1141-1142-1143.”
“Ask if she's in. If she is, get her on the 'phone, tell her long distance is calling, but doesn't want to speak to her unless she is alone. You get it?”
“Sure, brother. This ain't the first time I helped a party out.”
There was more jabbing with the switch-board plug, evident switching at the other end, several questions, and then the girl asked: “Is this Miss Margaret Cameron? Miss Cameron—” and so on as per Larry's instructions.
The operator turned to Larry: “She says she's alone.”
“Tell her to hold the wire till you get better connections—the storm has messed up connections terribly—and keep your own wire open and make her hold her end.”
As Larry went out he heard his instructions being executed while an adept hand safely banked the bill inside her shirt-waist. Within two minutes his taxi set him down at the Grantham; and knowing that whatever risks he ran would be lessened by his acting swiftly and without any suspicious hesitation, he walked straight in and to the elevators, in the manner of one having business there, his collar again pulled up, his cap pulled down, and his face just then covered with a handkerchief which was caring for a sniffling nose in a highly natural manner.
With his heart pounding he got without mishap to the doors numbered 1141, 1142, and 1143. Instinctively he knew in a general way what the apartment was like: a set of rooms of various character which the hotel could rent singly or throw together and rent en suite. But which of the three was the main entrance? He dared not hesitate, for the slightest queer action might get the attention of the floor clerk down the corridor. So Larry chose the happy medium and pressed the mother-of-pearl button of 1142.
The door opened, and before Larry stood a large, elderly, imposing woman in a rigidly formal evening gown—a gown which, by the way, had been part of Miss Grierson's equipment for many a year for helping raw young things master the art of being ladies. Larry surmised at once that this was the “hired companion” his grandmother had spoken of. In other days Larry had had experience with this type and before Miss Grierson could bar him out or ask a question, Larry was in the room and the door closed behind him—and he had entered with the easiest, most natural, most polite manner imaginable.
“You were expecting me?” inquired Larry with his disarming and wholly engaging smile.
Neither Miss Grierson's mind nor body was geared for rapid action. She was taken aback, and yet not offended. So being at a loss, she resorted to the chief item in her stock in trade, her ever dependable dignity.
“I cannot say that I was. In fact, sir, I do not know who you are.”
“Miss Cameron knows—and she is expecting me,” Larry returned pleasantly. His quick eyes had noted that this was a sitting-room: an ornate, patterned affair which the great hotels seem to order in hundred lots. “Where is Miss Cameron?”
“In the next room,” nodding at the connecting door. “She is engaged. Telephoning. A long-distance call. I'm quite sure she is not expecting you,” Miss Grierson went on to explain ponderously and elaborately, but with politeness, for this young man was handsome and pleasant and well-bred and might prove to be some one of real importance. “We were to have had a theater party with supper afterwards; but owing to Miss Cameron's indisposition we did not go to the theater. But she insisted on keeping the engagement for the supper, but changing it to here. Besides herself and myself, there are to be only her uncle, her cousin, and just one guest. That is why I am so certain, sir, she is not expecting you.”
“But you see,” smiled Larry, “I am that one guest.”
Miss Grierson shook her carefully coiffured transformation. “I've met the guest who is coming, and I certainly have not met you.”
“Then she must have asked two of us. Anyhow, I'll just speak to her, and if I'm mistaken and de trop, I'll withdraw.” And ere Miss Grierson could even stir up an intention to intervene further, this well-mannered young man had smiled his disarming smile and bowed to her and had passed through the door, closing it behind him.
He halted, the knob in his hand. Maggie was standing sidewise to him, holding a telephone in her hand, its receiver at her ear. She must have supposed that it was Miss Grierson who had so quietly entered, for she did not look around.
“Yes, I'm still waiting,” she was saying impatiently. “Can't you ever get that connection?”
Larry had seen Maggie only in the plain dark suit which she had worn to her daily business of selling cigarettes at the Ritzmore; and once, on the night of his return from Sing Sing, in that stage gypsy costume, which though effective was cheap and impromptu and did not at all lift her out of the environment of the Duchess's ancient and grimy house. But Larry was so startled by this changed Maggie that for the moment he could not have moved from the door even had he so desired. She was accoutered in the smartest of filmy evening gowns, with the short skirt which was then the mode, with high-heeled silver slippers, her rounded arms and shoulders and bosom bare, her abundant black hair piled high in careful carelessness. The gown was cerise in color, and from her forearm hung a great fan of green plumes. In all the hotels and theaters of New York one could hardly have come upon a figure that night more striking in its finished and fresh young womanhood. Larry trembled all over; his heart tried to throb madly up out of his throat.
At length he spoke. And all he was able to say was:
“Maggie.”
She whirled about, and telephone and receiver almost fell from her hands. She went pale, and stared at him, her mouth agape, her dark eyes wide.
“La-Larry!” she whispered.
“Maggie!” he said again.
“La-Larry! I thought you were in Chicago.”
“I'm here now, Maggie—especially to see you.” He did not know it, but his voice was husky. He noted that she was still holding the telephone and receiver. “It was I who put in that long-distance call. But I came instead. So you might as well hang up.”
She obeyed, and set the instrument upon its little table.
“Larry—where have you been all this while?”
He was now conscious enough to note that there was tense concern in her manner. He exulted at it, and crossed and took her hand.
“Right here in New York, Maggie.”
“In hiding?”
“In mighty good hiding.”
“But, Larry—don't you know it's dangerous for you to come out? And to come here of all places?”
“I couldn't help myself. I simply had to see you, Maggie.”
He was still holding her hand, and there was an instinctive grip of her fingers about his. For a moment—the moment during which her outer or more conscious self was startled into forgetfulness—they gazed at each other silently and steadily, eye into eye.
And then the things the Duchess had said crept back into his mind, and he said:
“Maggie, I've come to take you out of all this. Get ready—let's leave at once.”
That broke the spell. She jerked away from him, and instantly she was the old Maggie: the Maggie who had jeered at him and defied him the night of his return from prison when he had announced his new plan—the Maggie who had flaunted him as “stool” and “squealer” the evening she had left the Duchess's to enter upon this new career.
“No, you're not going to take me out of this!” she flung at him. “I told you once before that I wasn't going your way! I told you that I was going my own way! That held for then, and it holds for now, and it will hold for always!”
The softer mood which had come upon him by surprise at sight of her and filled him, now gave way to grim determination. “Yes, you are coming my way—sometime, if not now! And now if I can make you!”
Their embattled gazes gripped each other. But now Larry was seeing more than just Maggie. He was also taking in the room. It was close kin to the room in which he had left Miss Grierson: ornate, undistinguished, and very expensive. He noted one slight difference: a tiny hallway giving on the corridor, its inner door now opened.
But the greatest difference was what he saw over Maggie's smooth white shoulders: a table all set with china and glass and silver, and arranged for five.
“Maggie, what's this game you're up to?” he demanded.
“It's none of your business!” she said fiercely, but in a low tone—for both were instinctively remembering Miss Grierson in the adjoining room. And then she added proudly: “But it's big! Bigger than anything you ever dreamed of! And you can see I am putting it across so far—and I'll be putting it across at the finish! Compare it to the cheap line you talked about. Bah!”
“Listen, Maggie!” In his intensity he gripped her bare forearm. “This is bad business, and if you had any sense you'd know it! Don't you think I get the layout? Barney is your cousin, Old Jimmie is your uncle, that dame in the next room and this suite and your swell clothes to help put up a front! And your sickness that wouldn't let you go to the theater is just a fake, so that, not wanting to disappoint them entirely, you'd have an excuse for having supper here—and thus adroitly draw some person into the trap of a more intimate relationship. It's a clever and classy layout. Maggie, exactly what's your game?”
“I'll not tell you!”
“Who's that man that's coming here?”
“I'll not tell you!”
“Is he the sucker you're out to trim?”
“I'll not tell you!”
“You will tell me!” he cried dominantly. “And you're going to get out of all this! You hear me? It may look good to you now. But I tell you it has only one finish! And that's a rotten finish!”
She tore free from his punishing grip, and pantingly glared at him—her former defiance now an egoistic fury.
“I won't have you interfering with my life!—you fake preacher!—you stool, you squealer!” she flung at him madly. “Stool—squealer!” she repeated. “I tell you I'm going my own way—and it's a big way—and I tell you again nothing you can say or do can stop me! If I could have my best wish, all I'd wish for would be something to keep you from always interfering—something to get you out of my way!”
Panting, she paused. Her tense figure, with hands closing and unclosing, expressed the very acme of furious defiance—of desire to annihilate—of ultimate hatred. Larry was astounded by the very extent, the profundity, of her passion. And so they stood, silent except for their quick breathing, eyes fixed upon eyes, for several moments.
And then a key sounded in the outer door of the little hallway. Instantly there was an almost unbelievable transformation in Maggie. From an imperious, uncontrollable fury, she changed to a white, quivering thing.
“Barney!” she whispered; and sprang to the inner door of the little hallway, closed and locked it.
She turned on Larry a face that was ghastly in its pallor.
“Barney always carries a pistol,” she whispered.
They had heard the outer door close with a click of its automatic lock. They now heard the knob of the inner door turn and tugged at; and then heard Barney call: “What's the matter, Maggie? Let us in.”
Maggie made a supreme effort to reply in a controlled voice:
“Just a minute. I'm not quite ready.”
Then a second voice sounded from the other side of the door:
“Don't keep us too long, Maggie. Please!”
There was a distantly familiar quality to Larry in that second voice. But he did not try to place it then: he was too poignantly concerned in his own situation, and in the bewildering change in Maggie.
She slipped a hand through his arm. “Oh, La-Larry, why did you ever take such a risk!” she breathed. Her whisper was piteous, aquiver with fright. “Come this way!” and she quickly pulled him into the room where he had met Miss Grierson and to the door by which he had entered.
Maggie opened this door. “They're all in the little hallway—I don't think they'll see you,” her rapid, agitated whisper went on. “Don't take the elevators in this corridor, they're in plain sight. There are elevators just around the corner. Take them; they're safer. Good-bye, Larry—and, oh, Larry, don't ever take such a risk again!”
With that she pushed him out and closed the door.
Larry followed her instructions about the elevator; he used the same precautions in leaving that he had used in coming, and twenty minutes later he was back in his room in the Sherwood apartment. For an hour or more he sat motionless—thinking—thinking: asking himself questions, but in his tumultuous state of mind and emotions not able to keep to a question long enough to reason out its possible answer.
Just what was that game in which Maggie was involved?—a game which required that Grantham setting, that eminently respectable companion, and Maggie's accouterment as a young lady of obvious wealth.
Whose was that vaguely familiar second voice?—that voice which he still could not place.
But what he thought about most of all was something very different. What had caused that swift change in Maggie?—from a fury that was both fire and granite, to that pallid, quivering, whispering girl who had so rapidly led him safely out of his danger.
To and fro, back and forth, shuttled these questions. Toward two o'clock he stood up, mind still absorbed, and mechanically started to undress. He then observed the roll of paintings Hunt had given him. Better for them if they were flattened out. Mechanically he removed string and paper. There on top was the Italian mother he had asked for. A great painting—a truly great painting. Mechanically he lifted this aside to see what was the second painting Hunt had included. Larry gave a great start and the Italian mother went flapping to the floor.
The second painting was of Maggie; the one on which Hunt had been working the day Larry had come back: Maggie in her plain working clothes, looking out at the world confidently, conqueringly; the painting in which Hunt, his brain teeming with ideas, had tried to express the Maggie that was, the many Maggies that were in her, and the Maggie that was yet to be.
The next morning Larry tried to force his mind to attend strictly to Miss Sherwood's affairs. But in this effort he was less than fifty per cent effective. His experience of the night before had been too exciting, too provocative of speculation, too involved with what he frankly recognized to be the major interest of his life, to allow him to apply himself with perfect and unperturbed concentration to the day's routine. Constantly he was seeing the transformed Maggie in the cerise evening gown with the fan of green plumes—seeing her elaborate setting in her suite at the Grantham—hearing that vaguely familiar but unplaceable voice outside her door—recalling the frenzied effort with which Maggie had so swiftly effected his escape.
This last matter puzzled him greatly. If she were so angered at him as she had declared, if she so distrusted him, why had she not given him up when she had had him at her mercy? Could it be that, despite her words, she had an unacknowledged liking for him? He did not dare let himself believe this.
Again and again he thought of this adventure in whose very middle Maggie now was, and of whose successful issue she had proudly boasted to him. It was indeed something big, as she had said; that establishment at the Grantham was proof of this. Larry could now perceive the adventure's general outlines. There was nothing original in what he perceived; and the plan, so far as he could see it, would not have interested him in the least as a novel creation of the brain were not Maggie its central figure, and were not Barney and Old Jimmie her directing agents. A pretty woman was being used as a lure to some rich man, and his infatuation for her was to cause him to part with a great deal of money: some variation of this ancient idea, which has a thousand variations—that was the plan.
Obviously the enterprise was not directed at some gross victim whose palate might permit his swallowing anything. If any one item essentially proved this, it was the item of the overwhelmingly respectable chaperon. Maggie was being presented as an innocent, respectable, young girl; and the victim, whoever he was, was the type of man for whom only such a type of girl would have a compelling appeal.
And this man—who was he? Ever and again he tried to place the man's voice, with its faintly familiar quality, but it kept dodging away like a dream one cannot quite recall.
The whole business made Larry rage within himself. Maggie to be used in such a way! He did not blame Maggie, for he understood her. Also he loved her. She was young, proud, willful, had been trained to regard such adventures as colorful and legitimate; and had not lived long enough for experience to teach her otherwise. No, Maggie was not to blame. But Old Jimmie! He would like to twist Old Jimmie's neck! But then Old Jimmie was Maggie's father; and the mere fact of Old Jimmie being Maggie's father would, he knew, safeguard the old man from his wrath even were he at liberty to go forth and act.
He cursed his enforced seclusion. If only he were free to go out and do his best in the open! But then, even if he were, his best endeavors would have little influence upon Maggie—with her despising and distrusting him as she did, and with her so determined to go ahead in her own way.
Once during the morning, he slipped from the library into his room and gazed at the portrait of Maggie that Hunt had given him the night before: Maggie, self-confident, willful, a beautiful nobody who was staring the world out of countenance; a Maggie that was a thousand possible Maggies. And as he gazed he thought of the wager he had made with Hunt, and of his own rather scatter-brained plannings concerning it. He removed Maggie's portrait from the fellowship of the picture of the Italian mother, and hid it in his chiffonier. Whatever he might do in his endeavor to make good his boast to Hunt, for the present he would regard Maggie's portrait as his private property. To use the painting as he had vaguely planned, before he had been surprised to find it Maggie's portrait, would be to pass it on into other possession where it might become public—where, through some chance, the Maggie of the working-girl's cheap shirt-waist might be identified with the rich Miss Cameron of the Grantham, to Maggie's great discomfiture, and possibly to her entanglement with the police.
When Miss Sherwood came into the library a little later, Larry tried to put Maggie and all matters pertaining to his previous night's adventure out of his mind. He had enough other affairs which he was trying adroitly to handle—for instance, Miss Sherwood and Hunt; and when his business talk with her was ended, he remarked:
“I saw Mr. Hunt last evening.”
He watched her closely, but he could detect no flash of interest at Hunt's name.
“You went down to your grandmother's?”
“Yes.”
“That was a very great risk for you to take,” she reproved him. “I'm glad you got back safely.”
Despite the disturbance Maggie had been to his thoughts, part of his brain had been trying to make plans to forward this other aim; so he now told Miss Sherwood of his wager with Hunt and his bringing away a picture—he said “one picture.” He wanted to awaken the suppressed interest each had in the other; to help bridge or close the chasm which he sensed had opened between them. So he brought the picture of the Italian mother from his room. She regarded it critically, but with no sign of approval or disapproval.
“What do you think of it?” she asked.
“It's a most remarkable piece of work!” he said emphatically—wishing he could bring in that picture of Maggie as additional evidence supporting his opinion.
She made no further comment, and it was up to Larry to keep the conversation alive. “What is the most Mr. Hunt ever was paid for a painting? I mean one of what he swears at as his `pretty pictures'?”
“I believe about two thousand dollars.”
That was part of the information necessary to Larry's plan.
“Miss Sherwood, I'm going to ask another favor of you. In connection with a bet I made with Mr. Hunt. I want to talk with a picture dealer—the best one there is. I can't very well go to him. Can you manage to have him come here?”
“Easily. I know the man best for your purpose. I'll telephone, and if he's in New York he'll come to see you this afternoon.”
“Thank you.”
She started out, then turned. “Better finish your business with him to-day if you can. We go to the country to-morrow or the day after. I've just had word that the workmen are finally out of the house; though the grounds, of course, are in bad shape, and will probably remain so. With this labor situation, it's practically impossible to get men.”
Larry remembered something else. “Miss Sherwood, you recall my once speaking about a man I got to be friends with in prison—Joe Ellison?”
“Yes.”
“I've written him, under an assumed name, of course, and have had an answer. He'll be out in a very few days now. He's through with his old ways. I know he'd like nothing better than a quiet place to work, off to himself somewhere. I'm sure you can trust him.”
“We'll arrange to have him come out to Cedar Crest. Oh, don't think I'm being generous or sentimental,” she interrupted smilingly as he started to thank her. “I'd be glad to put two or three more ex-convicts to work on our place if I could get them. And so would my friends; they can't get workmen of any kind.”
That afternoon the picture dealer came. Miss Sherwood introduced Larry to him as Mr. Brandon, her cousin, and then left the two men together. Larry appraised Mr. Graham as a shrewd man who knew his business and who would like to score a triumph in his own particular field. He decided that the dealer had to be handled with a great deal of frankness, and with some stiff bluffing which must appear equally frank. The secret of Larry's earlier success had been to establish confidence and even enthusiasm in something which had little or no value. In selling an honest thing at an honest price, the first and fundamental procedure was the same, to establish confidence and, if possible, enthusiasm.
From the moment of introduction Larry quietly assumed the manner of an art collector who was very sure of himself; which manner was abetted by the setting of the Sherwood library. He felt something of the old zest when wits had been matched against wits, even though this was to be a strictly honorable enterprise.
“You know the work of Mr. Jerome Hunt?” he asked.
“I have handled practically all his work since he began to sell,” replied Mr. Graham.
“I was referring to work in his recent manner.”
“He has not been doing any work recently,” corrected Mr. Graham.
“No?” Larry picked up the Italian mother which for this occasion he had mounted with thumb-tacks upon a drawing-board, and stood it upon a chair in the most advantageous light. “There is a little thing in Mr. Hunt's recent manner which I lately purchased.”
Mr. Graham regarded the painting long and critically.
Finally he remarked:
“At least it is different.”
“Different and better,” said Larry with his quiet positiveness. “So much better that I paid him three thousand dollars for it.”
“Three thousand!” The dealer regarded Larry sharply. “Three thousand for that?”
“Yes. And I consider that I got a bargain.”
Mr. Graham was silent for several moments. Then he said “For what reason have I been asked here?”
“I want you to undertake to sell this picture.”
“For how much?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Five thousand dollars!”
“It is easily worth five thousand,” Larry said quietly.
“If you value it so highly, why do you want to sell?”
“I am pressed by the present money shortage. Also I secured a second picture when I got this one. That second picture I shall not sell. You should have no difficulty in selling this,” Larry continued, “if you handle the matter right. Think of how people have started again to talk about Gaugin: about his starting to paint in a new manner down there in the Marquesas Islands, of his trading a picture for a stick of furniture or selling it for a few hundred francs—which same paintings are now each worth a small fortune. Capitalize this Gaugin talk; also the talk about poor mad Blakeslie. You've got a new sensation. One all your own.”
“You can't start a sensation with one painting,” Mr. Graham remarked dryly.
This had been the very remark Larry had adroitly been trying to draw from the dealer.
“Why, that's so!” he exclaimed. And then as if the thought had only that moment come to him: “Why not have an exhibition of paintings done in his new manner? He's got a studio full of things just as characteristic as this one.”
Larry caught the gleam which came into the dealer's eyes. It was instantly masked.
“Too late in the spring for a picture show. Couldn't put on an exhibition before next season.”
“But why not have a private pre-exhibition showing?” Larry argued—“with special invitations sent to a small, carefully chosen list, putting it over strong to them that you were offering them the chance of a first and exclusive view of something very remarkable. Most of them will feel flattered and will come. And that will start talk and stir up interest in your public exhibition in the fall. That's the idea!”
Again there was the gleam, quickly masked, in the dealer's eyes. But Larry got it.
“How do I know this picture here isn't just an accident?—the only one of the sort Mr. Hunt has ever painted, or ever will paint?” cautiously inquired Mr. Graham. “You said you had a second picture. May I see it?”
Larry hesitated. But he believed he had the dealer almost “sold”; a little more and Mr. Graham would be convinced. So he brought in Maggie's portrait. The dealer looked it over with a face which he tried to keep expressionless.
“How much is this one?” he asked at length.
“It is not for sale.”
“It will bring more money than the other. It's a more interesting subject.”
“That's why I'm keeping it,” said Larry. “I think you'll admit, Mr. Graham, that this proves that Mr. Hunt is not now painting accidents.”
“You're right.” The mask suddenly dropped from Mr. Graham's face; he was no longer merely an art merchant; he was also an art enthusiast. “Hunt has struck something bold and fresh, and I think I can put him over. I'll try that scheme you mentioned. Tell me where I can find him and I'll see him at once.”
“That picture has got to be sold before I give you his address. No use seeing him until then; he'd laugh at you, and not listen to anything. He's sore at the world; thinks it doesn't understand him. An actual sale would be the only argument that would have weight with him.”
“All right—I'll buy the picture myself. Hunt and I have had a falling out, and I'd like him to have proof that I believe in him.” Again Mr. Graham was the art merchant. “Though, of course, I can't pay the five thousand you ask. Hunt's new manner may catch on, and it may not. It's a big gamble.”
“What will you pay?”
“What you paid for it—three thousand.”
“That's an awful drop from what I expected. When can you pay it?”
“I'll send you my check by an assistant as soon as I get back to my place.”
“I told you I was squeezed financially—so the picture is yours. I'll send you Mr. Hunt's present address when I receive your check. Make it payable to 'cash.'”
When Mr. Graham had gone with the Italian mother—it was then the very end of the afternoon—Larry wondered if his plan to draw Hunt out of his hermitage was going to succeed; and wondered what would be the result, if any, upon the relationship between Hunt and Miss Sherwood if Hunt should come openly back into his world an acclaimed success, and come with the changed attitude toward every one and every thing that recognition bestows.
But something was to make Larry wonder even more a few minutes later. Dick, that habitual late riser, had had to hurry away that morning without speaking to him. Now, when he came home toward six o'clock, Dick shouted cheerily from the hallway:
“Ahoy! Where you anchored, Captain Nemo?”
Larry did not answer. He sat over his papers as one frozen. He knew now whose had been the elusively familiar voice he had heard outside Maggie's door. It was Dick Sherwood's.
Dick paused without to take some messages from Judkins, and Larry's mind raced feverishly. Dick Sherwood was the victim Maggie and Barney and Old Jimmie were so cautiously and elaborately trying to trim! It seemed an impossible coincidence. But no, not impossible, after all. Their net had been spread for just such game: a young man, impressionable, pleasure-loving, with plenty of money, and with no strings tied to his spending of it. That Barney should have made his acquaintance was easily explained; to establish acquaintance with such persons as Dick was Barney's specialty. What more natural than that the high-spirited, irresponsible Dick should fall into this trap?—or indeed that he should have been picked out in advance as the ideal victim and have been drawn into it?
“Hello, there!” grumbled Dick, entering. “Why didn't you answer a shipmate's hail?”
“I heard you; but just then I was adding a column of figures, and I knew you'd look in.”
At that moment Larry noted the portrait of Maggie, looking up from the chair beside him. With a swiftness which he tried to disguise into a mechanical action, he seized the painting and rolled it up, face inside.
“What's that you've got?” demanded Dick.
“Just a little daub of my own.”
“So you paint, too. What else can you do? Let's have a look.”
“It's too rotten. I'd rather let you see something else—though all my stuff is bad.”
“You wouldn't do any little thing, would you, to brighten this tiredest hour in the day of a tired business man,” complained Dick. “I've really been a business man to-day, Captain. Worked like the devil—or an angel—whichever works the harder.”
He lit a cigarette and settled with a sigh on the corner of Larry's desk. Larry regarded him with a stranger and more contradicting mixture of feelings than he had ever thought to contain: solicitude for Dick—jealousy of him—and the instinct to protect Maggie. This last seemed to Larry grotesquely absurd the instant it seethed up in him, but there the instinct was: was Dick treating Maggie right?
“How was the show last night, Dick?”
“Punk!”
“I thought you said you were to see 'The Jest.' I've heard it's one of the best things for years.”
“Oh, I guess the show's all right. But the company was poor. My company, I mean. The person I wanted to see couldn't come.”
“Hope you had a supper party that made up for the disappointment,” pursued Larry, adroitly trying to lead him on.
“I sure had that, Captain!”
Dick slid to a chair beside Larry, dropped a hand on Larry's knee, and said in a lowered tone:
“Captain, I've recently met a new girl—and believe me, she's a knock-out!”
“Better keep clear of those show girls, Dick.”
“Never again! The last one cured me for life. Miss Cameron—Maggie Cameron, how's that for a name?—is no Broadway girl, Captain. She's not even a New York girl.”
“No?”
“She's from some place out West. Father owned several big ranches. She says that explains her crudeness. Her crude? I should say not! They don't grow better manners right here in New York. And she's pretty, and clever, and utterly naive about everything in New York. Though I must say,” Dick added, “that I'm not so keen about her cousin and her uncle. I'd met the cousin a few times the last year or two around town; he belongs here. The two are the sort of poor stock that crops out in every good family. They've got one merit, though: they don't try to impose on her too much.”
“What is your Miss Cameron doing in New York?”
“Having her first look at the town before going to some resort for the summer; perhaps taking a cottage somewhere. I say, Captain”—leaning closer—“I wish you didn't feel you had to stick around this apartment so tight. I'd like to take you out and introduce you to her.”
Larry could imagine the resulting scene if ever this innocently proposed introduction were given.
“I guess that for the present I'll have to depend upon your reports, Dick.”
“Well, you can take it from me that she's just about all right!”
It was Larry's strange instinct to protect Maggie that prompted his next remark:
“You're not just out joy-riding, are you, Dick?”
Dick flushed. “Nothing of that sort. She's not that kind of girl. Besides—I think it's the real thing, Captain.”
The honest look in Dick's eyes, even more than his words, quieted Larry's fear for Maggie. Presently Dick walked out leaving Larry yet another problem added to his life. He could not let anything happen to Maggie. He could not let anything happen to Dick. He had to protect each; he had to do something. Yet what could he do?
Yes, this certainly was a problem! He paced the room, another victim of the ancient predicament of divided and antagonistic duty.