Chapter 3

Presently Hunt's mind shifted to Larry Brainard, whom Barney Palmer and
Old Jimmie Carlisle had come here to see. Hunt had a mind curious about
every thing and every one; and blustering, bullying creature though he
was, he had the gift, possessed by but few, of audaciously thrusting
himself into other people's affairs without arousing their resentment.
He was keen to learn Maggie's attitude toward Larry; and he spoke not so
much to gain knowledge of Larry as to draw her out.

“This Larry--what sort of chap is he, Maggie?” As with most artists,
talking did not interfere with Hunt's painting.

Warm color slowly tinted Maggie's cheeks. “He's clever,” she said
positively. “You already know that. But I was only a girl when he was
sent away.”

Hunt smiled at her idea of her present maturity, implied by her last
sentence. “But you lived with the Duchess for a year before he was sent
away. You must have seen a lot of him, and got to know him well.”

“Oh, he used to come down now and then to see his grandmother--I was
only fifteen or sixteen then--just a girl, and he didn't pay much
attention to me. Father can tell you better just how smart he is.”

Old Jimmie spoke up promptly. He knew Hunt was not a police stool, and
he liked the painter as much as it was in him to like any man; so he
felt none of the reserve or caution that might have controlled him in
other company.

“You bet Larry's smart! Got the quickest brain of any con man in the
business--and him only about twenty-seven now. Some think I'm a smooth
proposition myself, but Larry puts it all over me. That's why I'm
willing to let him be my boss. He's a wonder at thinking up new stunts,
and then at working out safe new ways of putting them across.”

“But the police landed him at last,” commented Hunt.

“Yes, but that was only because another man muffed his end of the job.”

The handsome Barney Palmer had been restless during Old Jimmie's eulogy.
“Oh, Larry's all to the good--but he's not the only party that's got
real ideas.”

“Huh!” grunted Old Jimmie. “But you'll remember that we haven't put over
any big ones since Larry's been in stir.”

“That's been because you wouldn't listen to any of my ideas!” retorted
Barney. “And I handed out some peaches.”

Even during the period of Larry's active reign it had irked Barney to
accept another man as leader, and it had irked him even more during the
interregnum while Larry was guest of the State. For Barney believed in
his own Napoleonic strain.

“Don't let yourself get sore, Barney,” Old Jimmie said appeasingly.
“You'll have plenty of chances to try out your ideas as the main guy
before you cash in. You know the outfit wanted to lay low for a while,
anyhow. But we'll be putting over a lot of the big stuff when Larry gets
out.”

Hunt had noted a quick light come into Maggie's dark eyes while her
father praised the absent leader. He himself suddenly perceived a new
possibility.

“Maggie, ever think about teaming up with Larry?” he demanded, with his
audacious keenness.

She flushed, and hesitated. He did not wait for her slow-coming reply,
but turned to her father.

“Jimmie, did Larry ever use women in his stunts?”

“Never. Whenever we suggested using a skirt, Larry absolutely said there
was nothing doing. That's one point where he was all wrong. Nothing
helps so much, when the sucker is at all sentimental, as a clever,
good-looking woman. And Larry'll come around to it all right. He'll
see the sense of it, now that he's older and has had two years to think
things over.”

Old Jimmie nodded, showing his yellow teeth in a sly grin. “You said
something a second ago: Maggie and Larry! They'll make a wonder of a
team! I mean that she'll work under him with the rest of us. I've been
thinking about it a long while. Mebbe you haven't guessed it, but we've
been coaching her for the part, and she's just about ripe. She's got
the looks, and we can dress her right for whatever job's on hand. Oh,
Larry'll put over some great things with Maggie!”

If Hunt felt that there was anything cynically unpaternal in this father
planning for his daughter a career of crime, he gave no sign of it. His
attention was just then all on Maggie. He saw her eyes grow yet more
bright at these last sentences of her father: bright with the vision of
approaching adventure.

“The idea suits you, Maggie?” he asked.

“Sure. It'll be great--for Larry is a wonder!”

Barney Palmer suddenly rose, his face twisted with anger. “I'm all fed
up on this Larry, Larry, Larry! Come on, Jimmie. Let's get uptown.”

Wise Old Jimmie saw that Barney was near an outburst. “All right,
Barney, all right,” he said promptly. “Not much use waiting any longer,
anyhow. If Larry comes, we'll fix it with the Duchess to meet him
tomorrow.”

“Then so-long, Maggie,” Barney flung at her, and that swagger ex-jockey,
gambler, and clever manipulator of the confidence of people with money,
slashed aside the shabby burlap curtains with his wisp of a bamboo
walking-stick, and strode out of the room.

“Good-night, daughter,” and Old Jimmie crossed and kissed her. She
kissed him back--a perfunctory kiss. Maggie had never paused to think
the matter out, but for some reason she felt little real affection for
her father, though of course she admired his astuteness. Perhaps her
unconscious lack of love was due in part to the fact that she had never
lived with him. Ever since she remembered he had boarded her out, here
and there, as he was now boarding her at the Duchess's--and had only
come to visit her at intervals, sometimes intervals that stretched into
months.

“Barney is rather sweet on you,” remarked Hunt after the two were gone.

“I know he is,” conceded Maggie in a matter-of-fact way.

“And he seems jealous of Larry--both regarding you, and regarding the
bunch.”

“He thinks he can run the bunch just as well as Larry. Barney's clever
all right, and has plenty of nerve--but he's not in Larry's class. Not
by a million miles!”

Hunt perceived that this daring, world-defying, embryonically beautiful
model of his had idealized the homecoming nephew of the Duchess into her
especial hero. Hunt said no more, but painted rapidly. Night had fallen
outside, and long since he had switched on the electric lights. He
seemed not at all finicky in this matter of light; he had no supposedly
indispensable north light, and midday or midnight were almost equally
apt to find him slashing with brush or scratching with crayon.

Presently the Duchess entered. No word was spoken. The Duchess,
noteworthy for her mastery of silence, sank into a chair, a bent and
shrunken image, nothing seemingly alive about her but her faintly
gleaming, deep-set eyes. Several minutes passed, then Hunt lifted the
canvas from the easel and stood it against the wall.

“That's all for to-day, Maggie,” he announced, pushing the easel to one
side. “Duchess, you and this wild young thing spread the banquet-table
while I wash up.”

He disappeared into a corner shut off by burlap curtains. From within
there issued the sound of splashing water and the sputtering roar of
snatches of the Toreador's song in a very big and very bad baritone.

Maggie put out a hand, and kept the Duchess from rising. “Sit
still--I'll fix the table.”

Silently the Duchess 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 Duchess
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 Duchess. “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 Duchess 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 Duchess.

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 peacock blue, and held in place
by three huge barbaric pins jeweled with colored glass, 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 Duchess 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.