Old Jimmie did not like meeting the police any oftener than a meeting was forced upon him, and so he slipped away and allowed Barney Palmer to undertake alone the business of settling Larry. Barney found Gavegan exactly where he had counted: lingering over his late dinner in the cafe of a famous Broadway restaurant—a favorite with some of the detectives and higher officials of the Police Department—in which cafe, in happier days now deeply mourned, Gavegan had had all the exhilaration he wanted to drink at the standing invitation of the proprietor, and where even yet on occasion a bit of the old exhilaration was brought to Gavegan's table in a cup or served him in a room above to which he had had whispered instructions to retire. The proprietor had in the old days liked to stand well with the police; and though his bar was now devoted to legal drinks—or at least obliging Federal officers reported it to be—he still liked to stand well with the police.
Gavegan was at a table with a minor producer of musical shows, to whom Barney had been of occasional service in securing the predominant essential of such music—namely, shapely young women. Barney nodded to Gavegan, chatted for a few minutes with his musical-comedy friend, during which he gave Gavegan a signal, then crossed to the once-crowded bar, now sunk to isolation and the lowly estate of soft drinks, and ordered a ginger ale. Not until then did he notice Barlow, chief of the Detective Bureau, at a corner table. Barney gave no sign of recognition, and Barlow, after a casual glance at him, returned to his food.
Barney, in solitude at one end of the bar, slowly sipped with a sort of indignation against his kickless purchase. Presently Gavegan was beside him, having most convincing ill-luck in his attempts to light his cigar from a box of splintering safety matches which stood at that end of the bar.
“Well, what is it?” Gavegan whispered out of that corner of his mouth which was not occupied by his cigar. He did not look at Barney.
“Any clue to Larry Brainard yet?” Barney whispered also out of a corner of his mouth, glass at his lips. Like-wise he seemed not to notice the man beside him.
“Naw! Still out West somewhere. Them Chicago bums couldn't catch a crook if he walked along State Street with a sign-board on him!”
“Saw Larry Brainard to-night.”
Gavegan had difficulty in maintaining his attitude of non-awareness of his bar-mate.
“Where?”
“Right here in New York.”
“What! Where'd you see him?”
“Coming out of the Grantham.”
“When?”
“Fifteen minutes ago.”
“Know where he went to?—where he hangs out?—know anything else?”
“That's everything. Thought I'd better slip it to you as quick as I could.”
“This time that bird'll not get away!” growled Gavegan, still in a whisper. “Twenty-four hours and he'll be in the cooler!”
Finally Gavegan managed to get a flame from one of those irritatingly splintery Swedish matches made in Japan. Cigar alight he walked over to Barlow's table. He conversed with his Chief a moment or two, then went out. After a minute Barney saw Chief Barlow crossing toward the bar. Barney seemed not to notice this movement. Barlow likewise paused beside him to light a cigar; and from the side of the Chief's mouth there issued: “Room 613.”
Barlow passed on. Presently Barney finished the dreary drudgery of drink and sauntered out. Five minutes later, having exercised the proper caution, he was in Room 613, and the door was locked.
“What's this dope you just handed Gavegan about Larry Brainard?” demanded Barlow.
Barney gave his information, again, but this time more fully. Of course he omitted all mention of Maggie and the enterprise which Larry had sought to interrupt; it was part of the tacit understanding between these two that Barlow should have no knowledge of Barney's professional doings, unless such knowledge should be forced upon him by events or people too strong to be ignored.
“Did Brainard drop any clue that might give us a lead as to where he's hiding out?”
Barney remembered something Larry had said half an hour before, which he had considered mere boasting. “He said he knew I had some game on, and he said he knew who the sucker was I was planning to trim.”
“Did he say who the sucker was?”
“No.”
“If Larry Brainard really did know, then who would he be having in mind?”
Barney hesitated; but he perceived that this was a question which had to be answered. “Young Dick Sherwood, of the swell Sherwood family—you know.”
Barlow did not pursue the subject. According to his arrangement with Barney, the latter's private activities were none of his business.
“I'll get busy with the drag-net; we'll land Brainard this time,” said Barlow. And then with a grim look at Barney: “But Larry Brainard's not what I got you up here to talk about, Palmer. I wanted to talk about two words to you—and say 'em to you right between your eyes.”
“Go ahead, Chief.”
“First, you ain't been worth a damn to me for several months. You've given me no value received for me keeping my men off of you. You haven't turned up a single thing.”
“Come, now, Chief—you're forgetting about Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt.”
“Chicken feed! They're out on bail, and when their cases come up, they'll beat them! Besides, you didn't give me that tip to help me; you gave it to me so that you could fix things to put Larry Brainard in bad with all his old friends. You did that to help yourself. Shut up! Don't try to deny it. I know!”
Barney did not attempt denial. Barlow went on:
“And the second thing I want to tell you, and tell you hard, is this: You gotta turn in some business! The easy way you've been going makes it look like you've forgot I've got hold of you where the hair's long. Young man, you'd better remember that I've got you cold for that Gregory stock business—you and Old Jimmie Carlisle. Got all the papers in a safety-deposit vault, and got three witnesses doing stretches in Sing Sing. Keep on telling yourself all that! and keep on telling yourself that, if you don't come across, some day soon I'll suddenly discover that you're the guilty party in that Gregory affair, and I'll bring down those witnesses I've got cached in Sing Sing.”
Barney moved uneasily in his chair. He knew the bargain he had made, and did not like to dwell upon the conditions under which he was a licensed adventurer.
“No need to rag me like this, Chief,” he protested. “Sure I remember all you've said. And you're not going to have cause to be sore much longer. There'll be plenty doing.”
“See that there is! And see that you don't pull any raw work. And see that you don't let your foot slip. For if you do, you know what'll happen to you. Now get out!”
Barney got out, again protesting that he would not be found failing. He was not greatly disturbed by what Barlow had said. Every so often there had to be just such sessions, and every so often Barlow had to let off just such steam.
Barney's errand was done. The police of the city were on Larry's trail and his share in the matter was and would remain unknown. Thus far all was well. He had no doubt of Larry's early capture, now that he was back in New York, and now that the whole police force had been promptly warned and were hotly after him, and now that all avenues of exit would instantly be, in fact by this time were, under surveillance and closed against him—and now that every refuge of the criminal world was only a trap for him. No, there wasn't a doubt of Larry's early capture. There couldn't be. And once Larry was locked up, things would be much better. Barlow would see that Larry didn't talk undesirable things, or at least that such talk was not heard. It wasn't exactly pleasant or safe having Larry at large, free to blurt out to the wrong persons those things about Barney's being a stool and a squealer.
Greatly comforted, though eager for news of the chase, Barney started on his evening's routine of visiting the gayer restaurants. Business is business, and a man suffers when he neglects it. True, this was a neat proposition which he had in hand; but that would soon be cleaned up, and Businessman Barney desired to be all ready to move forward into further enterprises.
In the meanwhile there had been a session between Maggie and the Duchess. At about the time Barney had whispered his unlipped news to Gavegan, Maggie, breathless with her frantic haste though she had made the journey in a taxicab, entered the familiar room behind the pawnshop.
“Good-evening, Maggie.” The voice was casual, indifferent, though at that moment there was no person that the Duchess, pondering her problems, more wished to see. “Sit down. What's the matter?”
“The police know Larry is in New York and are after him!”
“How do you know?”
Rapidly Maggie told of the happenings in her sitting-room, and of Barney and Old Jimmie starting out to warn Gavegan. The Duchess heard every word, but most of her faculties were concentrated upon a reexamination of Maggie and upon those questions which had been troubling her all evening and for these many days. Was there good in Maggie? Was she justified in longer suppressing the truth of Maggie's parentage?
“Why are you telling me all this?” the Duchess asked, when Maggie had finished her rapid recital.
“Why! Isn't it plain? I want you to get warning to Larry that the police are after him!”
“Why not do it yourself?”
“I'm going out where he is to-morrow, but that may be too late.”
Maggie gave her other reasons, such as they were. The old woman's eyes never left Maggie's flushed face, and yet never showed any interest.
“I thought you were tied up with Barney and Old Jimmie,” the Duchess commented. “Why are you going against them in this, and trying to help Larry?”
“What's the difference why I'm doing it,” Maggie cried with feverish impatience, “so long as I'm trying to help him out of this!”
“Don't you realize,” continued the calm old voice, “that Larry must already know, as a matter of course, that the police and all the old crowd are after him?”
“Perhaps he does, and perhaps he doesn't. All the same, he should know for certain! The big point is, will you get Larry word?”
A moment passed and the Duchess did not speak. In fact this time she had not heard Maggie, so intent was she in trying to look through Maggie's dark, eager eyes to the very core of Maggie's being.
“Will you get Larry word?” Maggie repeated impatiently.
The Duchess came out of her study. There was a sudden thrill within her, but it did not show in her voice.
“Yes.”
“At once?”
“As soon as telling him will do any good. And now you better hurry back to your hotel, if you don't want Barney and Old Jimmie to suspect what you've been up to. Though why you still want to hang on to that pair, knowing what they are, is more than I can guess.”
She stood up. “Wait a minute,” she said as Maggie started for the door. Maggie turned back, and for another moment the Duchess silently peered deep into Maggie's eyes. Then she said shortly, almost sharply: “At your age I was twice as pretty as you are—and twice as clever—and I played much the same game. Look what I got out of life!... Good-night.” And abruptly the Duchess wheeled about and mounted the stairway.
Twenty minutes later Maggie was back at the Grantham, her absence unobserved. Though palpitant over Larry's fate, she had the satisfaction of having achieved with Larry's grandmother what she had set forth to achieve. She did not know, could not know, that what she had accepted as her achievement was inconsequential compared to what had actually been achieved by her spontaneous appearance before the troubled Duchess.
As the Duchess had gazed into Maggie's excited, imploring eyes, it had been borne in upon her carefully judging and painfully hesitant mind that there was better than a fifty per cent chance that Larry was right in his estimate of Maggie; that Maggie's inclination toward criminal adventure, her supreme self-confidence, all her bravado, were but the superficial though strong tendencies developed by her unfortunate environment; that within that cynical, worldly shell there were the vital and plastic makings of a real woman.
And so the long-troubled Duchess, who to her acquaintances had always seemed as unemotional as the dust-coated, moth-eaten parrot which stood in mummified aloofness upon her safe, had made a momentous decision that had sent through her old veins the thrilling sap of a great crisis, a great suspense. She had tried to guide destiny. She was now through with such endeavor. She had no right, because of her love for Larry, to withhold longer the facts of Maggie's parentage. She was now going to tell the truth, and let events work out as they would.
But the events—what were they going to be?
For a moment the Duchess had been impelled to tell the truth straight out to Maggie. But she had caught herself in time. This whole affair was Larry's affair, and the truth belonged to him to be used as he saw fit. So when she had told Maggie that she would get word to Larry, it was this truth which she had had in mind, and only in a very minor way the news which Maggie had brought.
This was, of course, such a truth as could be safely communicated only by word of mouth. The Duchess realized that Larry no longer dared come to her, and that therefore she must manage somehow to get to him. And get to him without betraying his whereabouts.
There was little chance that the police would search her place or greatly bother her. To the police mind, now that Larry was aware he was known to be in New York, the pawnshop would obviously be the last place in which he would seek refuge or through which he would have dealings. Nevertheless, the Duchess deemed it wise to lose no moment and to neglect no possible caution. Therefore, while Barney was still with Chief Barlow and before the general order regarding Larry had more than reached the various police stations, the Duchess, in cape, hat, and veil, was out of her house. A block up the street lived the owner of two or three taxicabs, concerning whom the Duchess, who was almost omniscient in her own world, knew much that the said owner ardently desired should be known no further. A few sentences with this gentleman, and fifteen minutes later, huddled back in the darkened corner of a taxicab, she rolled over the Queensboro Bridge out upon Long Island on her mission of releasing a fact whose effect she could not foresee.
An hour and a half after that Larry was leading her to a bench in the scented darkness of the Sherwoods' lawn. She had telephoned “Mr. Brandon” from a drug-store booth in Flushing, and Larry had been waiting for her near the entrance to Cedar Crest.
“What brought you out here like this, grandmother?” Larry whispered in amazement as he sat down beside her.
“To tell you that the police are after you,” she whispered back.
“I knew that already.”
“Yes, I knew that you would.”
“But how did you find out?”
“Maggie told me.”
“Maggie!”
“She came down to see me, told me what had just happened at her place, told me about Barney hurrying away to slip the news to that Gavegan, and begged me to warn you at once. She was terribly nervous and wrought up.”
“Maggie did that!” he breathed. His heart leaped at her unexpected concern for him. “Maggie did that!” And then: “There wasn't any need; she should have known that I would know.”
“It was rather foolish in a way—but Maggie was too excited to use cool reason.”
His grandmother did not speak for a moment. “Her losing her head and coming shows that she cares for you, Larry.”
He could make no response. This was indeed the clearest evidence Maggie had yet given that possibly she might care.
“Maggie may have lost her head in her excitement,” he managed to say; “but, grandmother, there was no reason for you to lose your head so far as to come away out here to tell me about the police.”
“I didn't come away out here to tell you about the police,” she replied. “I came to tell you something else.”
“Yes?”
“You're sure you really care for Maggie?”
“I told you that when I was down to see you this evening.”
Though the Duchess had decided, the desire to protect Larry remained tenaciously in her and made it hard for her jealous love to take a risk. “You're sure she might turn out all right—that is, under better influences?”
“I'm sure, grandmother.” He recalled how a few hours earlier at the Grantham the demand of Old Jimmie that she remain with him had seemed the force that had controlled her decision. “There would be no doubt of it if it were not for Old Jimmie, and the people he's kept her among, and the ideas he's been feeding her since she was a baby. I don't think she has any love for her father; but they say blood is mighty thick and I guess with her it's just the usual instinct of a child to stand with her father and do what he says. Yes, if she were not held back and held down by having Old Jimmie for a father, I'm sure she'd be all right.”
The Duchess felt that the moment had now arrived for her to unloose her secret. But despite her fixed purpose to tell, her words had to be forced out, and were halting, bald.
“Jimmie Carlisle—is not her father.”
“What's that?” exclaimed Larry.
“Not so loud. I said Jimmie Carlisle is not her father.”
“Grandmother!”
“Her father is Joe Ellison.”
“Grandmother!” He caught her hands. “Why—why—” But for a moment his utter dumbfoundment paralyzed his speech. “You're—you're sure of that?” he finally got out.
“Yes.” She went on and told of how her suspicion had been aroused, of her interview with Joe Ellison which had transmuted suspicion into certainty, of her theory of the motives which had actuated Jimmie Carlisle in so perverting the directions of the man who had held Jimmie as his most trusted friend.
Larry was fairly stunned by this recital of what had been done. And he was further stunned as he realized the fullness of what now seemed to be the circumstances.
“God, think of it!” he breathed. “Maggie trying to be a great adventuress because she was brought up that way, because she thinks her father wants her to be that—and having never a guess of the truth! And Joe Ellison believing that his daughter is a nice, simple girl, happily ignorant of the life he tried to shield her from—and having never a guess of the truth! What a situation! And if they should ever find out—”
He broke off, appalled by the power and magnitude of what he vaguely saw. Presently he said in a numbed, awed voice:
“They should know the truth. But how are they to find out?”
“I'm leaving all that to you, Larry. Maggie and Joe Ellison are your affair. It's up to you to decide what you think best to do.”
Larry was silent for several moments. “You've known this for some time, grandmother?”
“For several weeks.”
“Why didn't you tell me before?”
“I was afraid it might somehow bring you closer to Maggie, and I didn't want that,” she answered honestly. “Now I think a little better of Maggie. And you've proved to me I can trust a great deal more to your judgment. Yes, I guess that's the chief reason I've come out here to tell you this: you've proved to me I've got to respect your judgment. And so whatever you may do—about Maggie or anything else—will be all right with me.”
She did not wait for a response, but stood up. Her voice which had been shot through with emotion these last few minutes was now that flat, mechanical monotone to which the habitants of her little street were accustomed.
“I must be getting back to the city. Good-night.”
He started to accompany her to her car, but she forbade him, saying that it would not help matters to have him seen and possibly recognized by the taxicab driver; and so she went out of the grounds alone. Within another hour and a half she was set down unobserved in a dim side street in Brooklyn. Thence she made her way on foot to the Subway and rode home. If the police had noticed her absence and should question her, she could refuse to answer, or say that she had been visiting late with a friend in Brooklyn.
Larry sat long out in the night after his grandmother had left him. What should he do with this amazing information placed at his disposal? Tell Joe Ellison? Or tell Maggie? Or tell both? Or himself try to meet Jimmie Carlisle and pay that traitor to Joe Ellison and that malformer of Maggie the coin he had earned?
But for hours the situation itself was still too bewildering in its many phases for Larry to give concentrated thought to what should be its attempted solution. Not until dawn was beginning to awaken dully, as with a protracted yawn, out of the shadowy Sound, was he able really to hold his mind with clearness upon the problem of what use he should make of these facts of which he had been appointed guardian. He decided against telling Joe Ellison—at least he would not tell him yet. He recalled the rumors of Joe Ellison's repressed volcano of a temper; if Joe Ellison should learn how he had been defrauded, all the man's vital forces would be instantly transformed into destructive, vengeful rage that would spare no one and count no cost. The result would doubtless be tragedy, with no one greatly served, and with Joe very likely back in prison. If he himself should go out to give Old Jimmie his deserts, his action would be just good powder wasted—it likewise would serve no constructive purpose. Larry realized that it is only human nature for a wronged man to wish for and attempt revenge; but that in the economy of life revenge has no value, serves no purpose; that it usually only makes a bad situation worse.
A tremendous wrong had been done here, a wrong which showed a malignant, cunning, patient mind. But as Larry finally saw the matter, the point for first consideration was not the valueless satisfaction of making the guilty man suffer, but was to try to restore to the victims some part of those precious things of which they had been unconsciously robbed.
And then Larry had what seemed to him an inspiration: his inspiration being only a sane thought, and what the Duchess, though she had not pointed the way to him, had thought he would do. Maggie was the important person in this situation!—Maggie whose life was just beginning, and whose nature he still believed to be plastic! Not Joe Ellison or Old Jimmie Carlisle, who had almost lived out their lives and whose natures were now settled into what they would be until the end. By playing upon the finer elements in Maggie's character he had all but succeeded in rousing to dominance that best nature which existed within her. He would privately tell Maggie the truth, and tell only her and leave the using of that knowledge to her alone. The shock of that knowledge, the effect of its revelations upon her, together with the responsibility of what she should do with this information, might be just the final forces necessary to make Maggie break away from all that she had been and swing over to all that he believed she might be.
Yes, that was the thing to do! And he would do it within the next twelve hours; for Dick had told him that Maggie was coming out again to Cedar Crest on the afternoon of the day which was now rousing from its sleep. That is, he would do it if the police or the allies of his one-time friends did not locate him before Maggie came. But of that he had no serious fear; he knew he had made a clean get-away from the Grantham, and that the shrewd Duchess had left no scent by which those bloodhounds of the Police Department could trail her.
Larry did not even try to sleep; he knew it would be of no avail. Back in his own room he sat going over the situation, and his decision. He tingled with the sense of the tremendous power which had been delivered into his hands. Yes, tremendous! But what were going to be Maggie's reactions the moment he told her?—just what would be her course after she knew the truth?
Larry undressed, had a bath, shaved, dressed again, and started to work. But that day the most Larry did was abstractedly going through the motions of work. He was completely filled with the situation and its many questions, and with the suspense of waiting for Maggie to come and of how he was going to manage to see her privately.
The meeting, however, proved no difficulty; for Maggie, who arrived at four, had come primarily on Larry's account and she herself maneuvered the encounter. While they were on the piazza, Dick having gone into the house for a fresh supply of cigarettes, and Miss Sherwood being in an animated discussion with Hunt, Maggie said:
“Miss Sherwood, I've never had a real look down at the Sound from the edge of your bluff. Do you mind if Mr. Brandon shows me?”
“Not at all. Tea won't be served for half an hour, so take your time. Have Mr. Brandon show you the view from just the other side of that old rose-bench; that's the best view.”
They walked away chatting mechanically until they were in a garden seat behind the rose-bench. The rose-bench was a rather sorry affair, for it had been set out in this exposed place by a former gardener who had forgotten that the direct winds from the Sound are malgracious to roses. However, it screened the two, and was far enough removed so that ordinary tones would not carry to the house.
“Did your grandmother get you word about the police?” Maggie asked with suppressed excitement as soon as they were seated.
“Yes. She came out here about midnight.”
“Then why, while you still had time, didn't you get farther away from New York than this?”
“If I'm to be caught, I'm to be caught; in the meantime, this is as safe a place as any other for me. Besides, I wanted to have at least one more talk with you—after something new grandmother told me about you.”
“Something new about me?” echoed Maggie, startled by his grave tone. “What?”
“About your father,” he said, watching closely for the effect upon her of his revelations.
“What about my father? What's he been doing that I don't know about?”
“You do not know a single thing that your father has done.”
“What!”
“Because you do not know who your father is.”
“What!” she gasped.
“Listen, Maggie. What I'm going to tell you may seem unbelievable, but you've got to believe it, because it's the truth. I can see that you have proofs if you want proofs. But you can accept what I tell you as absolute facts. You are by birth a very different person from what you believe yourself. Your father is not Jimmie Carlisle. And your mother—”
“Larry!” She tensely gripped his arm.
“Your mother was of a good family. I imagine something like Miss Sherwood's kind—though not so rich and not having such social standing. She died when you were born. She never knew what your father's business actually was; he passed for a country gentleman. He was about the smoothest and biggest crook of his time, and a straight crook if there is such a thing.”
“Larry!” she breathed.
“He kept this gentleman-farmer side of his life and his marriage entirely hidden from his crook acquaintances; that is, from all except one whom he trusted as his most loyal friend. Before you were old enough to remember, he was tripped up and sent away on a twenty-year sentence.”
“And he's—he's still in prison?” whispered Maggie.
Larry did not heed the interruption. “He had developed the highest kind of ambition for you. He wanted you to grow up a fine simple woman like your mother—something like Miss Sherwood. He did not want you ever to know the sort of life he had known; and he did not want you to be handicapped by the knowledge that you had a crook for a father. He still had intact your mother's fortune, a small one, but an honest one. So he put you and the money in the hands of his trusted friend, with the instructions that you were to be brought up as the girls of the nicest families are brought up, and believing yourself an orphan.”
“That friend of his, Larry?” she whispered tensely.
“Jimmie Carlisle.”
“O—oh!”
“I don't know what Jimmie Carlisle's motives were for what he has done. Perhaps to get your money, perhaps some grudge against your father, which he was afraid to show while your father was free, for your father was always his master. But Old Jimmie has brought you up exactly contrary to the orders he received. If revenge was Old Jimmie's motive, his cunning, cowardly brain could not have conceived a more diabolical revenge, one that would hurt your father more. Till a few years ago, when word was sent to your father that Old Jimmie was dead, Jimmie regularly wrote your father about the success of his plan, about how splendidly you were developing and getting on with the best people. And your father—I knew him in prison—now believes you have grown up into exactly the kind of young woman he planned.”
“Larry!” she choked in a numbed voice. “Larry!”
“Your father is now as happy as it is possible for him to be, for he has lived for years and still lives in the belief that his great dream, the only big thing left for him to do, has come to pass: that somewhere out in the world is his daughter, grown into a nice, simple, wholesome young woman, with a clean, wholesome life before her. And though she is the one thing in all the world to him, he never intends to see her again for fear that his seeing her might somehow result in an accident that would destroy her happy ignorance. Maggie, can you conceive the tremendous meaning to your father of what he believes he has created? And can you conceive the tremendous difference between the dream he lives upon, and the reality?”
She was white, staring, wilted. For once all the defiance, self-confidence, bravado, melted out of her, and she was just an appalled and frightened young girl.
After a moment she managed to repeat the question Larry had ignored: “Is my real father—still in prison?”
“You'd like to see your real father?” he asked her.
“I think—I'd like to have a glimpse of him,” she breathed.
Larry, just before this, had noted Joe Ellison in his blue overalls and wide straw hat cleaning out a bank of young dahlias a distance up the bluff. He now took Maggie's arm and guided her in that direction.
“See that man there working among the dahlias?—the man who once brought you a bunch of roses? Joe Ellison is his name. He's the man I've been talking about—your father.”
He felt her quivering under his hand for a moment, and heard her breath come in swift, spasmodic pants. He was wondering what was the effect upon her of this climax of his revelation, when she whispered:
“Do you suppose—I can speak—to my father?”
“Of course. He likes all young women. And I told you that he and I were close friends.”
“Then—come on.” She arose, clinging to him, and drew him after her. Halfway to Joe she breathed: “You please say something first. Anything.”
He recognized this as the appeal of one whose faculties were reeling. There had never been any attempt here at Cedar Crest to conceal Joe Ellison's past, and in Larry's case there had been only such concealment as might help his evasion of his dangers. And so Larry remarked as Joe Ellison took his wide hat off his white hair and stood bareheaded before them:
“Joe, Miss Cameron knows who I really am, and about my having been in Sing Sing; and I've just told her about our having been friends there. Also I told her about your having a daughter. It interested her and she asked me if she couldn't talk to you, so I brought her over.”
Larry stood aside and tensely watched this meeting between father and daughter. Joe bowed slightly, and with a dignified grace that overalls and over fifteen years of prison could not take from one who during his early and middle manhood had been known as the perfection of the finished gentleman. His gray eyes warmed with appreciation of the young figure before him, just as Larry had seen them grow bright watching the young figures disporting in the Sound.
“It is very gracious for a young woman like you, Miss Cameron,” he said in a voice of grave courtesy, “to be interested enough in an old man like me to want to talk with him.”
Maggie made the supreme effort of her life to keep herself in hand. “I wanted to talk to you because of something Mr. Brainard told me about—about your having a daughter.”
Larry felt that this was too sacred a scene for him to intrude upon. “Would you mind excusing me,” he said; “there are some calculations I've got to rush out”—and he returned to the bench on which they had been sitting and pretended to busy himself over a pocket notebook.
While Larry had been speaking and moving away, Maggie had swiftly been appraising her father. His gray eyes were direct as against the furtiveness of Jimmie's; his mouth had a firm kindliness as against the wrinkled cunning of Jimmie's; his bearing was erect, self-possessed, as against Jimmie's bent, shuffling carriage. Maggie felt no swift-born daughter love for this stranger who was her father. The turmoil of her discovery filled her too completely to admit a full-grown affection; but she thrilled with the sense of the vast difference between her supposed father and this her real father.
In the meantime her father had spoken. Joe would have been more reserved with men or with older women; but with this girl, so much the sort of girl he had long dreamed about, his reserve vanished without resistance, and in its place was a desire to talk to this beautiful creature who came out of the world which the big white house represented.
“I have a daughter, yes,” he said. “But Larry—Mr. Brainard perhaps I should say—has likely told you all there is to tell.”
“I'd like to hear it from you, please—if you don't mind.”
“There's really not much to tell,” he said. “You know what I was and what happened. When I went to prison my daughter was too young to remember me—less than two years old. I didn't want her ever to be drawn into the sort of life that had been mine, or be the sort of woman that a girl becomes who gets into that life. And I didn't want her ever to have the stigma, and the handicap, of her knowing and the world knowing that her father was a convict. You can't understand it fully, Miss Cameron, but perhaps you can understand a little how disgraced you would feel, what a handicap it would be, if your father were a convict. I had a good friend I could trust. So I turned my daughter over to him, to be brought up with no knowledge of my existence, and with every reasonable advantage that a nice girl should have. I guess that's all, Miss Cameron.”
“This friend—what was his name?”
“Carlisle—Jimmie Carlisle. But his name could never have meant anything to you. Besides, he's dead now.”
Maggie forced herself on. “Your plan—it turned out all right? And you—you are happy?”
“Yes.” In the sympathetic atmosphere which this young girl's presence created for him, Joe's emotions flowed into words more freely than ever before in the company of a human being. Though he was answering her, what he was really doing was rather just letting his heart use its long-silent voice, speak its exultant dream and belief.
“Somewhere out in the world—I don't know where, and I don't want to know—my daughter has now grown into a wholesome, splendid young woman!” he said in a vibrant voice. Brooding in solitude so long upon his careful plan that he believed could not fail, had made the keen Joe Ellison less suspicious concerning it than he otherwise would have been—perhaps had made him a bit daffy on this one subject. “I have saved my daughter from all the grime she might have known, and which might have soiled her, and even pulled her down if I hadn't thought out in good time my plan to protect her. And of course I am happy!” he exulted. “I have done the best thing that it was possible for me to do, the thing which I wanted most to do! Instead of what she might have been, I have as a daughter just such a nice girl as you are—just about your own age—though, of course, she hasn't your money, your social position, and naturally not quite the advantages you have had. Of course I'm happy!”
“You're—you're sure she's all that?”
Again his words were as much a statement aloud to himself of his constant dream as they were a direct answer to Maggie. “Of course! There was enough money—the plan was in the hands of a friend who knew how to handle such a thing—she's never known anything but the very best surroundings—and until she was fourteen I had regular reports on how wonderfully she was progressing. You see my friend had had her legally adopted by a splendid family, so there's no doubt about everything being for the best.”
“And you”—Maggie drove herself on—“don't you ever want to see her?”
“Of course I do. But at the very beginning I fixed things so I could not; so that I would not even know where she is. Removed temptation from myself, you see. Don't you see the possible results if I should try to see her? Something might happen that would bring out the truth, and that would ruin her happiness, her career. Don't you see?”
His gray eyes, bright with his great dream, were fixed intently upon Maggie; and yet she felt that they were gazing far beyond her at some other girl... at his girl.
“I—I—” she gulped and swayed and would have fallen if he had not been quick to catch her arm.
“You are sick, Miss?” he asked anxiously.
“I—I have been,” she stammered, trying to regain control of her faculties. “It's—it's that—and my not eating—and standing in this hot sun. Thank you very much for what you've told me. I'd—I'd better be getting back.”
“I'll help you.” And very gently, with a firm hand under one arm, he escorted her to the bench where Larry sat scribbling nothings. He then raised his hat and returned to his dahlias.
“Well?” queried Larry when they were alone.
“I can't stand it to stay here and talk to these people,” she replied in an agonized whisper. “I must get away from here quick, so that I can think.”
“May I come with you?”
“No, Larry—I must be alone. Please, Larry, please get into the house, and manage to fake a telephone message for me, calling me back to New York at once.”
“All right.” And Larry hurried away. She sat, pale, breathing rapidly, her whole being clenched, staring fixedly out at the Sound. Five minutes later Larry was back.
“It's all arranged, Maggie. I've told the people; they're sorry you've got to go. And Dick is getting his car ready.”
She turned her eyes upon him. He had never seen in them such a look. They were feverish, with a dazed, affrighted horror. She clutched his arm.
“You must promise never to tell my father about me!”
“I won't. Unless I have to.”
“But you must not! Never!” she cried desperately. “He thinks I'm—Oh, don't you understand? If he were to learn what I really am, it would kill him. He must keep his dream. For his sake he must never find out, he must keep on thinking of me just the same. Now, you understand?”
Larry slowly nodded.
Her next words were dully vibrant with stricken awe. “And it means that I can never have him for my father! Never! And I think—I'd—I'd like him for a father! Don't you see?”
Again Larry nodded. In this entirely new phase of her, a white-faced, stricken, shivering girl, Larry felt a poignant sympathy for her the like of which had never tingled through him in her conquering moods. Indeed Maggie's situation was opening out into great human problems such as neither he nor any one else had ever foreseen!
“There comes Dick,” she whispered. “I must do my best to hold myself together. Good-bye, Larry.”
A minute later, Larry just behind her, she was crossing the lawn on Dick's arm, explaining her weakness and pallor by the sudden dizziness which had come upon her in consequence of not eating and of being in the hot sun.