Children of the Whirlwind Part 2

He disappeared into a corner shut off by burlap curtains. From within there issued the sound of splashing water and the sputtering roar of s.n.a.t.c.hes of the Toreador's song in a very big and very bad baritone.

Maggie put out a hand, and kept the d.u.c.h.ess from rising. "Sit still--I'll fix the table."

Silently the d.u.c.h.ess acquiesced. Maggie had never felt any tenderness toward this strange, silent woman with whom she had lived for three years, but it was perhaps an indication of qualities within Maggie, whose existence she herself never even guessed, that she instinctively pushed the old woman aside from tasks which involved any physical effort. Maggie now swung the back of a laundry bench up to form a table-top, and upon it proceeded to spread a cloth and arrange a medley of chipped dishes. As she moved swiftly and deftly about, the d.u.c.h.ess watching her with immobile features, these two made a strangely contrasting pair: one seemingly spent and at life's grayest end, the other electric with vitality and giving off the essence of life's unknown adventures.

Hunt stepped out between the curtains, pulling on his coat. "You'll find that chow in my fireless cooker will beat the Ritz," he boasted. "The tenderest, fattest kind of a fatted calf for the returned prodigal."

Maggie started. "The prodigal! You mean--Larry is coming?"

"Sure," grinned Hunt. "That's why we celebrate."

Maggie wheeled upon the d.u.c.h.ess. "Is Larry really coming?"

"Yes," said the old woman.

"But--but why the uncertainty about when he was coming back? Father and Barney thought he was due to get out yesterday."

"Just a mistake we all made about his release. His time was up this afternoon."

"But you told Barney and my father you hadn't heard from him."

"I had heard," said the d.u.c.h.ess in her flat tone. "If they want to see him they can see him to-morrow."

"When--when will he be here?"

"Any minute," said the d.u.c.h.ess.

Without a word Maggie whirled about and the next moment she was in her room on the floor below. She did not know what prompted her, but she had a frantic desire to get out of this plain shirt-waist and skirt and into something that would be striking. She considered her scanty wardrobe; her father had recently spoken of handsome gowns and furnishings, but as yet these existed only in his words, and the pseudo-evening gowns which she had worn to restaurant dances with Barney she knew to be cheap and uneffective.

Suddenly she remembered the things Hunt had given her, or had loaned her, the evening four months earlier when he had taken her to an artists' masquerade ball--though to her it had been a bitter disappointment when Hunt had carried her away before the unmasking at twelve o'clock. She tore off the offending waist and skirt, pulled from beneath the bed the pasteboard box containing her costume; and in five minutes of flying hands the transformation was completed. Her thick hair of burnished black was piled on top of her head in gracious disorder, and from it swayed a scarlet paper flower. About her lithe body, over a black satin skirt, swathing her in its graceful folds, clung a Spanish shawl of saffron-colored background with long brown silken fringe, and flowered all over with brown and red and peac.o.c.k blue, and held in place by three huge barbaric pins jeweled with colored gla.s.s, one at either hip and upon her right shoulder, leaving her smooth shoulders bare and free. With no more than a glance to get the hasty effect, she hurried up to the studio.

Hunt whistled at sight of her, but made no remark. Flushed, she looked back at him defiantly. The d.u.c.h.ess gave no sign whatever of being aware of the transformation.

Maggie with excited touches tried to improve her setting of the table, aquiver with expectancy and suspense at the nearness of the meeting--every nerve of audition strained to catch the first footfall upon the stairs. Hunt, watching her, could but wonder, in case Larry was the clever, dashing person that had been described, what would be the outcome when these two natures met and perhaps joined forces.

CHAPTER IV

While the preparations for dinner were going on in the studio, down below Larry turned a corner and swung up the narrow street toward the p.a.w.nshop. He halted and peered in before entering; in doing this he was obeying the caution that was his by instinct and training.

Leaning over the counter within, and chatting with his grandmother's a.s.sistant was Casey, one of the two plain-clothesmen who had arrested him. Larry drew back. He was not afraid of Casey, or of Gavegan, Casey's partner, or of the whole police force, or of the State of New York; they had nothing on him, he had settled accounts by having done his bit. All the same, he preferred not to meet Casey just then. So he went down the street, crossed the cobbled plaza along the water-front, and slipped through the darkness among the trucks out to the end of the pier. Under his feet the East River splashed sluggishly against the piles, but out near the river's center he could see the tide swirling out to sea at six miles an hour, toward the great shadowy Manhattan Bridge crested with its splendid tiara of lights.

He stretched himself and breathed deeply of the warm free spring. It tasted good after two long years of the prison's sealed air. He would have liked to shed his clothing and dive down for a brisk fight with the tingling water. Larry had always taken pleasure in keeping his body fit.

He had not cared for the gymnasiums of the ward clubs where he would have been welcome; in them there had been too much rough horseplay and foulness of mouth, and such had always been offensive to him. And though he had ever looked the gentleman, he had known that the New York Athletic Club and other similar clubs were not for him; they pried a bit too much into a candidate's social and professional standing. So he had turned to a club where really searching inquiries were rarely made; for years he had belonged to a branch of the Y.M.C.A. located just off Broadway, and had played handball and boxed with chunky, slow-footed city detectives who were struggling to retain some physical activity, and with fat playwrights, and with Jewish theatrical managers, and with the few authentic Christians who occasionally strayed into the place and seemed ill at ease therein. He had liked this club for another reason; his sense of humor had often been highly excited by the thought of his being a member of the Y.M.C.A.

Having this instinct for physical fitness, he had not greatly minded being a coal-pa.s.ser during the greater part of his stay at Sing Sing; better that than working in the knitting mills; so that now, though underfed and under weight, he was active and hard-muscled.

Larry Brainard could not have told why, and just when, he had turned to devious ways. He had never put that part of his life under the microscope. But the simple facts were that he had become an orphan at fifteen and a broker's clerk at nineteen after a course in a business college; and that experiences with wash-sales and such devious and dubious practices of brokers, his high spirits, his instinct for pleasure, his desire for big winnings--these had swept him into a wild crowd before he had been old enough to take himself seriously, and had started him upon a brilliant career of adventures and unlawful money-making in whose excitement there had been no let-up until his arrest. He had never thought about such technical and highly academic subjects as right and wrong up to the day when Casey and Gavegan had slipped the handcuffs upon him. To laugh, to dance, to plan and direct clever coups, to spend the proceeds gayly and lavishly--to challenge the police with another daring coup: that had been life to him, a game that was all excitement.

And now, after two years in which there had been plenty of time for thinking, his conscience still did not trouble him on the score of his offenses. He believed, and was largely right in this belief, that the suckers he had trimmed had all been out to secure unlawful gain and to take cunning advantage of his supposedly foolish self and of other dupes. He had been too clever for them, that was all; in desire and intent they had been as great cheats as himself. So he felt no remorse over his victims; and as for anything he may have done against that impersonal ent.i.ty, the criminal statutes, why, the period in prison had squared all such matters. So he now faced life pleasantly and with care-free soul.

Larry had turned away from the dark river and had started to retrace his way, when he saw a man approaching through the darkness. Larry paused.

The man drew near and halted exactly in front of Larry. By the swing of his body Larry had recognized the man, and his own figure instinctively grew tense.

"What you doin' out here, Brainard?" The voice was peremptory and rough.

"Throwing kisses over at Brooklyn," Larry replied coolly. "And what are you doing out here, Gavegan?"

"Following you. I wanted a quiet word with you. I've been right behind you ever since you hit New York."

"I knew you would be. You and Casey. But you haven't got anything on me."

"I got plenty on you before!--with Casey helping," retorted Gavegan.

"And I'll get plenty on you again!--now that I know you are the main guy of a clever outfit. You'll be starting some smooth game--but I'm going to be right after you every minute. And I'll get you. That's the news I wanted to slip you."

"So!" commented Larry drawlingly. "Casey's a fairly decent guy, considering his line--but, Gavegan, I don't see how Casey stands you as a partner. And, Gavegan, I don't see why the Board of Health lets you stay around the streets--when putrefying matter causes so much disease."

"None of your lip, young feller!" growled Gavegan. He stepped closer, bulking over Larry. "You think you are such a d.a.m.ned smart talker and such a d.a.m.ned clever schemer--but I'll bet I'll have you locked up in six months."

Anger boiled up within Larry. Against all the persons connected with his arrest, trial, and imprisonment, he had no particular resentment, except against this one man. He never could forget the time he and Gavegan, he handcuffed, had been locked in a sound-proof cell, and Gavegan had given him the third degree--in this case a length of heavy rubber hose, applied with a powerful arm upon head and shoulders--in an effort to make him squeal upon his confederates. And that third degree was merely a sample of the material of which Gavegan was made.

Larry held his desire in leash. "So you bet you'll get me. I'll take that bet--any figure you like. I've already got a new game cooked up, Gavegan. Cleverer than anything I've ever tried before."

"Oh, I'll get you!" Gavegan growled again.

"Oh, no, you won't!" And then Larry's old anger against Gavegan got into his tongue and made it wag tauntingly. "You didn't get me the last time; that was a slip and police stools got me. All by yourself, Gavegan, you couldn't get anything. Your brain's got flat tires, and its motor doesn't fire, and its clutch is broken. The only thing about it that still works is the horn. You've got a h.e.l.l of a horn, Gavegan, and it never stops blowing."

A tug was nearing the dock, and by its light Larry saw the terrific swing that the enraged detective started. Larry swayed slightly aside, and as Gavegan lunged by, Larry's right fist drove into Gavegan's chin--drove with all the power of his dislike and all the strength of five years in a Y.M.C.A. gymnasium and a year in a prison boiler-room.

Gavegan went down and out.

Larry gazed a moment at the dim, sprawling figure, then turned and made his way off the pier and again to the door of the p.a.w.nshop. Casey was gone; he could see no one within but Old Isaac, the a.s.sistant.

Larry opened the door and entered. "h.e.l.lo, Isaac. Where's grandmother?"

It is not a desirable trait in one connected with a p.a.w.nshop, that is also reputed to be a fence, to show surprise or curiosity. So Isaac's reply was confined to a few facts and brief direction.

Wondering, Larry mounted the stairway which opened from the confidential business room behind the p.a.w.nshop. It was common enough for his grandmother to rent out the third floor; but to a painter, and a crazy painter--that seemed strange. And yet more strange was it for her to be having dinner with the painter.

Larry knocked at the door. A big male voice within gave order:

"Be parlor-maid, Maggie, and see who's there."

The door opened and Larry half entered. Then he stopped, and in surprise gazed at the flushed, gleaming Maggie, slender and supple in the folds of the Spanish shawl.