Larry was far more deeply moved this time when Maggie drove away with Dick than on that former occasion when he had tried to play with adroitness upon her psychological reactions. Now he knew that her very world was shaken; that her soul was stunned and reeling; that she was fighting with all her strength for a brief outward composure.
He had loved her for months, but he had never so loved her as in this hour when all her artificial defenses had been battered down and she had been just a bewildered, agonized girl, with just the emotions and first thoughts that any other normal girl would have had under the same circumstances. His great desire had been to be with her, to comfort her, help her; but he realized that she had been correct in her instinct to be by herself for a while, to try to comprehend it all, to try to think her way out.
When Maggie was out of sight he excused himself from having tea, left Hunt and Miss Sherwood upon the veranda, and sought his study. But though he had neglected his work the whole day, he now gave it no attention. He sat at his desk and thought of Maggie: tried to think of what she was going to do. Her situation was so complicated with big elements which she would have to handle that he could not foretell just what her course would be. It was a terrific situation for a young woman, who was after all just a very young girl, to face alone. But there was nothing for him but to wait for news from her. And she had not said even that she would ever let him hear.
While he considered these matters he had risen and paced the room. Once he had paused at a French window which opened upon a side veranda, and had seen below him a few yards away Joe Ellison, whose interest in his flowers had established his workday from sunrise to sunset. Joe Ellison had been pulling tiny weeds that were daring to attempt to get a start in a rose-garden. Larry's mind had halted a moment upon Joe. Here at least was a contented man: one who, no matter what happened, would remain in ignorance of possibly great events which would intimately concern him. Then Larry had left the window and had returned to his thoughts of Maggie.
But Larry's thoughts were not to remain exclusively with Maggie for long. Shortly after six Judkins entered and announced that a man was at the door with a message. The man had refused to come in, saying he was only a messenger and was in a hurry; and had refused to give Judkins the message, saying that it was verbal. Thinking that some word had come from his grandmother, or possibly even from Maggie, Larry went out upon the veranda. Waiting for him was a nondescript man he did not know.
“Mr. Brandon, sir?” asked the man.
“Yes. You have a message for me?”
Before the man could reply, there came a shout from the shrubbery beyond the drive:
“Grab him, Smith! He's the man!”
Instantly Smith's steely arms were about Larry, pinning his elbows to his sides, and a man broke from the shrubbery and hurried toward the house. Instinctively Larry started to struggle, but he ceased as he recognized the man coming up the steps. It was Gavegan. Larry realized that he had been shrewdly trapped, that resistance would serve no end, and the next moment handcuffs were upon his wrists.
“Well, Brainard,” gloated Gavegan, “we've landed you at last!”
“So it seems, Gavegan.”
“You thought you was damned clever, but I guess you know now you ain't one, two, three!”
“Oh, I knew how clever you are, Gavegan,” Larry responded dryly, “and that you'd get me sooner or later if I hung around.”
As a matter of fact Larry's capture, which was as unspectacular as his escape had been strenuous, was the consequence of no cleverness at all. Larry had said to Barney Palmer the night before that he knew who Barney's sucker was; and Barney had passed this information along to Chief Barlow. “Follow every clue; luck may be with you and one of the clues may turn up what you want”:—this is in substance an unwritten rule of routine procedure which effects those magnificent police solutions which are presented as more mysterious than the original mystery—for it is well for the public to believe that its police officers are unfailingly more clever than its criminals. Barlow had done some routine thinking: if Larry Brainard knew Dick Sherwood was the sucker, then watching Dick Sherwood might possibly reveal the whereabouts of Larry Brainard. Barlow had passed this tip along to Gavegan. Gavegan had grumbled to himself that it was only a thousand to one shot; but luck had been with him, and his long shot had won.
Miss Sherwood, Hunt behind her, had been drawn by the sound of voices around to the side of the veranda where stood the four men. “What are you doing?” she now sharply demanded of Gavegan.
“Don't like to make any unpleasant scene, Miss Sherwood, but I've gotta tell you that this so-called Brandon is a well-known crook.” Gavegan enjoyed few things more than astounding people with unpleasant facts. “His real name is Brainard; he's done time, and now he's wanted by the New York police for a tough job he pulled.”
“I knew all that long ago,” said Miss Sherwood.
“Eh—what?” stammered Gavegan.
“Mr. Brainard told me all that the first time I saw him.”
“Hello, Gavegan,” said Hunt, stepping forward.
“Well, I'll be—if you ain't that crazy—” Again the ability to express himself coherently and with restraint failed Gavegan. “If you ain't that painter that lived down at the Duchess's!”
“Right, Gavegan—as a detective always should be. And Larry Brainard was then, and is now, my friend.”
Miss Sherwood again spoke up sharply. “Mr. Gavegan—if that is your name—you will please take those foolish things off Mr. Brainard's wrists.”
Gavegan had been cheated out of creating a sensation. That discomfiture perhaps made him even more dogged than he was by nature.
“Sorry, Miss, but he's charged with having committed a crime and is a fugitive from justice, and I can't.”
“I'll be his security. Take them off.”
“Sorry to refuse you again, Miss. But he's a dangerous man—got away once before. My orders is to take no risks that'll give him another chance for a get-away.”
Miss Sherwood turned to Larry. “I'll go into town with you, and so will Mr. Hunt. I'll see that you get bail and a good lawyer.”
“Thank you, Miss Sherwood,” Larry said. “Gavegan, I guess we're ready to start.”
“Not just yet, Brainard. Sorry, Miss Sherwood, but we've got a search warrant for your place. We just want to have a look at the room Brainard used. No telling what kind of crooked stuff he's been up to. And to make the search warrant O.K. I had it issued in this county and brought along a county officer to serve it. Show it to the lady, Smith.”
“I have no desire to see it, Mr. Gavegan. I have more interest in watching you while you go through my things.” And giving Gavegan a look which made an unaccustomed flush run up that officer's thick neck and redden his square face, she led the way into Larry's study. “This is the room where Mr. Brainard works,” she said. “Through that door is his bedroom. Everything here except his clothing is my property. I shall hold you rigidly responsible for any disorder you may create or any damage you may do. Now you may go ahead.”
“Let's have all your keys, Brainard,” Gavegan choked out.
Larry handed them over. With Miss Sherwood, Hunt, and Larry looking silently on, the two men began their examination. They began with the papers on Larry's desk and in its drawers; and in all his life Gavegan had not been so considerate in a search as he now was with Miss Sherwood's blue eyes coldly upon him. They unlocked cabinets, scrutinized their contents, shook out books, examined the backs of pictures, took up rugs; then passed into Larry's bedroom. Miss Sherwood made no move to follow the officers into that more intimate apartment, and the other two watchers remained with her.
A minute passed. Then Gavegan reentered, a puzzled, half-triumphant look on his red face, holding out a square of paint-covered canvas.
“Found this thing in Brainard's chiffonier. What the he—I mean what's it doing out here?”
There was not an instant's doubt as to what the thing was. Larry started, and Hunt started, and Miss Sherwood started. But it was Miss Sherwood who first spoke.
“Why, it's a portrait of Miss Cameron, in costume! And painted by Mr. Hunt!” In amazement she turned first upon Larry and upon Hunt. “When did you ever paint her portrait, when you did not meet Miss Cameron till you met her here? And, Mr. Brainard, how do you come to possess Miss Cameron's portrait?”
It was Gavegan who spoke up promptly, and not either of the two suddenly discomfited men. And Gavegan instantly sensed in the situation a chance to get even for the humiliation his self-esteem had just suffered.
“Miss Cameron nothing! Her real name is Maggie Carlisle, and she used to live at a dump of a pawnshop down on the East Side run by Brainard's grandmother. Brainard knew her there, and so did Mr. Hunt.”
“But—but—” gasped Miss Sherwood—“she's been coming out here as Maggie Cameron!”
“I tell you your Maggie Cameron is Maggie Carlisle!” said Gavegan gloatingly. “I've known her for years. Her father is Old Jimmie Carlisle, a notorious crook. And she's mixed up right now with her father and some others in a crooked game. And Brainard here used to be sweet on her, and probably still is, and if he's been letting her come here, without telling you who she is—well, I guess you know the answer. Didn't I tell you, Miss, that give me a chance and I'd turn up something against this guy Brainard!”
Miss Sherwood's face was white, but set with grim accusation that was only waiting to pronounce swift judgment. “Mr. Hunt, is it true that Miss Cameron is this Maggie Carlisle the officer mentions, and that you knew it all the while?”
“Yes—” began the painter.
“Don't blame him, Miss Sherwood,” Larry interrupted. “He didn't tell you because I begged him not to as a favor to me. Blame me for everything.”
Her judgment upon Hunt was pronounced with cold finality, her eyes straight into Hunt's: “Whatever may have been Mr. Hunt's motives, I unalterably hold him to blame.”
She turned upon Larry. The face which he had only seen in gracious moods was as inflexibly stern as a prosecuting attorney's.
“We're going to go right to the bottom of this, Mr. Brainard. You too have known all along that this Miss Cameron was really the Maggie Carlisle this officer speaks of?”
“Yes.”
“And you have known all along that she was the daughter of this notorious criminal, Old Jimmie Carlisle?”
The impulse surged up in Larry to tell the newly learned truth about Maggie. But he remembered Maggie's injunction that the truth must never be known. He checked his revelation just in time.
“Yes.”
“And is it true that Maggie Carlisle is herself what is known as a crook?—or has had crooked inclinations or plans?”
“It's like this, Miss Sherwood—”
“A direct answer, please!”
“Yes.”
“And is it true, as this officer has suggested, that you were in love with her yourself?”
“Yes.”
“You are aware of my brother's infatuation for her? That he has asked her to marry him?”
“Yes.”
Her voice now sounded more terrible to Larry. “I took you in to give you a chance. And your repayment has been that, knowing all these things, you have kept silent and let me and my brother be imposed upon by a swindling operation. And who knows, since you admit that you love the girl, that you have not been a partner in the conspiracy from the first!”
“That's exactly the idea, Miss!” put in Gavegan.
Larry had foreseen many possible wrong turns which his plan might take, but he was appalled by the utter unexpectedness of the actual disaster. And yet he recognized that the evidence justified Miss Sherwood's judgment of him. It all made him seem an ingrate and a swindler.
For the moment Larry was so overwhelmed that he made no attempt to speak. And since for once Gavegan was content merely to gloat over his triumph, there was stiff silence in the room until Miss Sherwood said in the cold voice of a judge after a jury has brought in a verdict of guilty:
“Of course, if you think there is anything you may say for yourself, Mr. Brainard, you now have the chance to say it.”
“I have much to say, but I can't blame you if you refuse to believe most of it,” Larry said desperately, fighting for what seemed his last chance. “I loved Maggie Carlisle. I believed she had splendid qualities. Only she was dominated by the twisted ideas Old Jimmie Carlisle had planted in her. I wanted to eradicate those twisted ideas, and make her good qualities her ruling ones. But she didn't believe in me. She thought me a soft-head, a police stool, a squealer. Then I had to disappear; you know all about that. Not till I had been with you for several weeks did I learn that she was being used in a swindling scheme against Dick.
“I did think of telling you or Dick. But my greatest interest was to awaken that better person I believed to be in her; and I knew that the certain result of my exposing her to you would be for me to lose the last bit of influence I had with her, and for her to pass right on to another enterprise of similar character. So the idea came to me that if I didn't expose her, but caused her to be received with every courtesy by her intended victims, the effect upon her would be that she would feel a revulsion for what she was doing and she would come to her best senses. I told this to Mr. Hunt; that's why he agreed not to give her away. And another point, though frankly this was not so important to me: it seemed to me that a good hard jolt might be just what was needed to make Dick take life more seriously, and I saw in this affair a chance for Dick to get just the jolt he needed.
“That's all, Miss Sherwood. Except that I have seen signs which make me believe that what I figured would happen to Maggie Carlisle have begun to happen to her.”
“Bunk!” snorted Gavegan.
“I know that part of what he says is true,” put in Hunt.
Miss Sherwood ignored Hunt and his remark. The look of controlled wrath which she held upon Larry did not change. Larry recognized that his statement had sounded most implausible. Miss Sherwood in her indignation considered only that her kindness had been betrayed, her hospitality outraged, and that those she had accepted as friends had sought to trick her family in the worst way she could conceive; and she spoke accordingly.
“If that is the best Mr. Brainard has to say for himself, Mr. Gavegan, you may take him with you, and without any interference from me. I ask only that you take him out of the house at once.”
With that she moved from the room, not looking again at either Hunt or Larry. For a brief space there was silence, while Gavegan let his triumph feed gloatingly upon the sight of his prisoner.
This brief silence was broken by a low, strange sound, like a human cry quickly repressed, that seemed to come from just outside the French windows.
“What was that?” Larry asked quickly.
“I didn't hear anything,” said Gavegan whose senses had been thoroughly concentrated upon his triumph.
“I did,” said Hunt. “On the veranda.”
“We'll see. Watch him—” to the county officer; and Gavegan followed Hunt to the French windows and looked out. “No one on the veranda, and no one in sight,” he reported. “You fellows must have been dreaming.”
He returned and faced Larry. “I guess you'll admit, Brainard, that I've got you for keeps this time.”
“Then suppose we be starting for Headquarters.” Larry responded.
Hunt moved to Larry's side. “I'll just trail along after you, Larry. Anyhow, this doesn't seem to be any place for me.”
A few minutes afterwards Larry was in a car beside Gavegan, speeding away from Cedar Crest toward the city. Larry's thoughts were the gloomiest he had entertained since he had come out of Sing Sing months before with his great dream. All that he had counted on had gone wrong. He was in the hands of the police, and he knew how hard the police would be. He had incurred the hostility of Miss Sherwood and had lost what had seemed a substantial opportunity to start his career as an honest man. The only item of his great plan in which he did not seem to have failed completely was Maggie. And he did not know what Maggie was going to do.
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