Children of the Whirlwind Part 31

"Weren't you surprised?"

"Nope," he answered with deliberate monosyllabioness.

"Why not?"

"I'd been wised up that I'd be likely to meet you--and here."

"Here! By whom?"

"By advice of counsel I must decline to answer."

"Why didn't you tell Miss Sherwood who I am and show me up?"

"Because I'd been requested not to tell."

"Requested by whom?"

"Maggie," he drawled, "you seem to be making a go of this lady crook business--but I think you might have been even more of a shining light as a criminal cross-examiner. However, I refuse to be cross-examined further. By the way," he drawled on, "how goes it with those dear souls, Barney and Old Jimmie?"

She ignored his question.

"Please! Who asked you not to tell?"

There was a sudden glint of good-humored malice in his eyes. "Mind if I smoke?"

"No."

He drew out a silver cigarette case and opened it. "Empty!" he exclaimed. "Excuse me while I get something from the house to smoke.

I'll be right back."

Without waiting for her permission he stepped out of the arbor and she heard his footsteps crunching up the gravel path. Maggie waited his return in pulsing suspense. Her situation had been developing beyond anything she had ever dreamed of; she was aquiver as to what might happen next. So absorbed was she in her chaos of feeling and thoughts that she did not even hear the humble symphony of the hundreds of bees drawing their treasure from the golden hearts of the roses; and did not see, across the path a score of yards away, the tall figure of Joe Ellison among the rosebushes, pruning-shears in hand, with which he had been cutting out dead blossoms, gazing at her with that hungry, admiring, speculative look with which he had regarded the young women upon the beach.

Presently she heard Hunt's footsteps coming down the path. Then she detected a second pair. d.i.c.k accompanying him, she thought. And then Hunt appeared before her, and was saying in his big voice: "Miss Cameron, permit me to present my friend, Mr. Brandon." And then he added in a lowered voice, grinning with the impish delight of an overgrown boy who is playing a trick: "Thought I'd better go through the motions of introducing you people, so it would look as if you'd just met for the first time." And with that he was gone.

Maggie had risen galvanically. For the moment she could only stare. Then she got out his name.

"Larry!" she whispered. "You here?"

"Yes."

Astounded as she was, she had caught instantly the total lack of amazement on Larry's part.

"You're--you're not surprised to see me?"

"No," he said evenly. "I knew you were here. And before that I knew you were coming."

That was almost too much for Maggie. Hunt had known and Larry had known; both were people belonging to her old life, both the last people she expected to meet in such circ.u.mstances. She could only stare at him--entirely taken aback by this meeting.

And indeed it was a strangely different meeting from the last time she had seen him, at the Grantham; strangely different from those earlier meetings down at the d.u.c.h.ess's when both had been grubs as yet unmetamorphosized. Now standing in the arbor they looked a pair of weekend guests, in keeping with the place. For, as Maggie had noted, Larry in his well-cut flannels was as greatly transformed as Hunt.

It was Larry who ended the silence. "Shall we sit down?"

She mechanically sank to the bench, still staring at him.

"What are you doing here?" she managed to breathe.

"I belong here."

"Belong here?"

"I work here," he explained. "I'm called 'Mr. Brandon,' but Miss Sherwood knows exactly who I am and what I've been."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since that night when Barney and Old Jimmie took you away to begin your new career--the same night that I ran away from those gunmen who thought I was a squealer, and from Casey and Gavegan."

"And all the while that Barney and my father and the police have thought you hiding some place in the West, you've been with the Sherwoods?"

"Yes. And I've got to remain in hiding until something happens that will clear me. If the police or Barney and his friends learn where I am--you can guess what will happen."

She nodded.

"Hunt got me here," he went on to explain. "I'm a.s.sisting in trying to get the Sherwood business affairs in better shape. I might as well tell you, Maggie," he added quietly, "that d.i.c.k Sherwood is my very good friend."

"d.i.c.k Sherwood!" she breathed.

"And I might as well tell you," he went on, "that since that night at the Grantham when I heard his voice, I've known that d.i.c.k is the sucker you and Barney and Old Jimmie are trying to trim."

She half rose, and her voice sounded sharply: "Then you've got me caught in a trap! You've told them about me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Not so loud, or we may attract attention," he warned her. "I haven't told because you had your chance to give me away to Barney that night at the Grantham. And you didn't give me away."

She sank slowly back to the bench. "Is that your only reason?"

"No," he answered truthfully. "Exposing you would merely mean that you'd feel harder toward me--and harder toward every one else. I don't want that."

She pondered this a moment. "Then--you're not going to tell?"

He shook his head. "I don't expect to. I want you to be free to decide what you're going to do--though I hope you'll decide not to go through with this thing you're doing."

She made no response. Larry had spoken with control until now, but his next words burst from him.

"Don't you see what a situation it's put me in, Maggie--trying to play square with my friends, the Sherwoods, and trying to play square with you?"