Children of the Whirlwind Part 6

"You really mean, Larry," demanded Old Jimmie, "that you're going to drop us after us counting on you and waiting for you so long?"

"I'm sorry about having kept you waiting, Jimmie. But we've parted definitely." Then Larry added: "Unless you want to travel my road."

"Your road! Never!" snapped Barney.

"And you, Jimmie?" Larry inquired, his eyes on Barney's inflamed face.

"I don't see your proposition. And I'm too old a bird to start something new. No, thanks. I'll stick to what I know."

His next words, showing his long yellow teeth, were spoken slowly, but they were hard, and had a cutting edge. "You've got a sweet idea of what's straight, Larry: dropping us without a leader, just when we need a leader most."

Larry's composed yet watchful gaze was still on Barney. "You're not really left in such a bad way. Barney here is ready to take charge."

"You bet I am!" Barney flamed at him, his hands clenching. "And the bunch won't lose by the change, you bet! The bunch always thought you were an ace--and I always knew you were a two-spot. And now they'll see I was right--that you were always yellow!"

Larry still leaned against the safe in the same posture of seeming ease, but he expected Barney to strike at any moment, and held himself in readiness for a flas.h.i.+ng fist. Barney had been hard to hold in leash in the old days; now that all ties of partners.h.i.+p were broken, he saw in those small gleaming eyes a defiance and a hatred that henceforth had no reason for restraint. And he knew that Barney was shrewd, grimly tenacious, and limitless in self-confidence and ambition.

"And listen to this, too, Larry Brainard," Barney's temper carried him on. "Don't you mix in and try any preaching on Maggie." He half turned his head jealously. "Maggie, don't you listen to any of this b.o.o.b's Salvation Army talk!"

Maggie did not at once respond, but stood gazing at the two confronting figures. To her they were an oddly dissimilar pair: Barney in the smartest clothes that an over-smart Broadway tailor could create, and Larry in the shapeless garments that were the State's gift to him on leaving prison.

"Maggie," he repeated, "don't you listen to this b.o.o.b's talk!"

"I'll do just as I please, Barney."

"But you're going to come our way?" he demanded.

"Of course."

He turned back to Larry. "You hear that? You leave Maggie alone!"

Larry did not answer, though his temper was rising. He looked over Barney's head at Maggie's father.

"Jimmie," he remarked in his same even voice, "anything more you'd like to say?"

"I'm through."

"Then," said Larry, "better lead your new commander-in-chief out of here, or I'll carry him out and spank him."

"What's that?" snarled Barney.

"Get out!" Larry ordered, in a voice suddenly like steel.

Barney's fist swung viciously at Larry's head. It did not land, because Larry's head was elsewhere. Larry did not take advantage of the opening to strike back, but as the fist flashed by he seized the wrist, and in the same instant he seized the other wrist. The next moment he held Barney helpless in a twisting, torturing grip that he had learned from one of his non-Christian friends at the Y.M.C.A.

"Barney--are you going to walk out, or shall I kick you out?"

Barney's answer came after a moment through gritted teeth: "I'll walk out--but I'll get you for this!"

"I know you'll try, Barney. And I know you'll try to get me behind my back." Larry loosed his grip. "Good-night."

Barney backed glowering to the door; and Old Jimmie, his gray face an expressionless mask, silently followed him out.

All this while the d.u.c.h.ess had looked on, motionless in her corner, a dingy, forgotten part of the dingy background--no more noticeable than one of her own dusty, bizarre pledges.

CHAPTER VI

For a moment after the door had closed upon Barney and Old Jimmie, Larry stood gazing at it. Then he turned to Maggie.

She was standing slenderly upright. Her head was imperiously high, her black eyes defiant. Neither spoke at once. More than before was he impressed by her present and her potential beauty. Till this night he had thought of her only casually, as merely a young girl; he was not now consciously in love with her--her young woman-hood had burst upon him too suddenly for such a consciousness--but a warm tingling went through him as he gazed at her imperious, self-confident youth. Part of his mind was thinking much the same thought that Hunt had considered a few hours earlier: here were the makings of a magnificent adventuress.

"Maggie," he mused, "you didn't get your looks from your father. You must have had a fine-looking mother."

"I don't know--I never saw her," she returned shortly.

"Poor kid," Larry mused on--"and with only Old Jimmie for a father." She did not know what to say. For a long time she had dreamed of this man as her hero; she had dreamed of splendid adventures with him in which she should win his praise. And now--and now--

He switched to another subject.

"So you have decided to string along with your father and Barney?"

"I have."

"Don't you do it, Maggie."

"Don't you preach, Larry."

"I'm not preaching. I'm just talking business to you. The same as I talked business to myself. The crooked game is a poor business for a woman who can do something else--and you can do something else. I've known a lot of women in the crooked game. They've all had a rotten finish, or are headed for one. So forget it, Maggie. There's more in the straight game."

She had swiftly come to feel herself stronger and wiser than her ex-hero. In her tremendous pride and confidence of eighteen, she regarded him almost with pitying condescension.

"Something's softened your brain, Larry. I know better. The people who pretend to go straight are just fakes; they're playing a different kind of a smooth game, that's all. Everybody is out to get his, and get it the easiest and quickest way he can. You know that's so. And that's just what I am going to do."

Larry had once talked much the same way, but it seemed puzzlingly strange just now to hear such talk from a young girl. Then he understood.

"You couldn't help having such ideas, Maggie, living among crooks ever since you were a kid. Why, Old Jimmie could not have used better methods, or got better results, if he had set out consciously to make you a crook." Then a sudden possibility came to him. "D'you suppose he could always have had that plan--to make you into a crook?" he asked.

"What difference does that make?" she demanded shortly.

"A funny thing for a father to do with his own child," Larry returned.

"But whether Jimmie intended it or not, that's just what he's done."

"What I am, I am," she retorted with her imperious defiance. Just then she felt that she hated him; she quivered with a desire to hurt him: he had so utterly destroyed her romantic hero and her romantic dreams. Her hands clenched.