Children of the Whirlwind

CHAPTER XXXIII

Dick's departure left Maggie to think alone upon an intricate and possibly dangerous interplay of characters in which she had cast herself for the chief role, which might prove a sacrificial role for her. She quickly perceived that Dick's plan, clever as it might be, would bring about, in the dubious event of its success, only one of the several happenings which had to come to pass if she were to clear her slate before her disappearance.

Dick's plan was good; but it would only get rid of Barney and Old Jimmie. It would only rid Larry of such danger as they represented; it would only be revenge upon them for the evil they had done. And, after all, revenge helped a man forward but very little. There would still remain, even in the event of the success of Dick's plan, the constant danger to Larry from the police hunt, instigated by Chief Barlow's vindictive determination to send Larry back to prison for his refusal to be a stool-pigeon; and the constant danger from his one-time friends who were hunting him down with deadly hatred as a squealer.

Somehow, if she were to set things right for Larry, she had to maneuver that night's happenings in such a way as to eliminate forever Barlow's persecutions, and eliminate forever the danger to Larry from his friends' and their hirelings' desire for vengeance upon a supposed traitor.

Maggie thought rapidly, elaborating on Dick's plan. But what Maggie did was not so much the result of sober thought as of the inspiration of a desperate, hardly pressed young woman; but then, after all, what we call inspiration is only thought geared to an incredibly high speed. First of all, she got rid of that slow-witted, awesome supernumerary, Miss Grierson, who might completely upset the delicate action of the stage by a dignified entrance at the wrong moment and with the wrong cue. Next she called up Chief Barlow at Police Headquarters. Fortunately for her Barlow was still in; for an acrimonious dispute, then in progress and taking much space in the public prints, between him and the District Attorney's office was keeping him late at his desk despite the most autocratic and pleasant of all demands, those of his dinner hour. To him Maggie gave a false name, and told him that she had most important information to communicate at once; to which he growled back that she could give it if she came down at once.

Next she called up Barney, who had been waiting near a telephone in expectation of news of the result of her second visit to the home of Dick Sherwood. To Barney she said that she had the greatest possible news—news which would require immediate action—and that he should be at her suite at nine o'clock prepared to play his part at once in the big proposition that had just developed, and that he should get word to Old Jimmie to follow him in a few minutes.

Within fifteen minutes a taxicab had whirled her down to Police Headquarters and she was in the office where three months earlier Larry had been grilled after his refusal of the license to steal and cheat on the condition that he become a police stool. Barlow, who was alone in the room, looked up with a scowl from a secret report he had secured of the activities of detectives in the District Attorney's office. Although Maggie was pretty and stylishly dressed, Barlow did not rise nor did he remove the big cigar he had been viciously gnawing. It is the tradition of the Police Department, the most thoroughly respected article of its religion, that a woman who is seen in Police Headquarters cannot by any possibility be a lady.

“Well, what's on your chest?” he grunted, not even asking her to be seated.

It was suddenly Maggie's impulse—sprung perhaps out of unconscious memory of what Larry had suffered—to inflict upon herself the uttermost humiliation. So she said:

“I've come here to offer myself as a stool-pigeon.”

“What's that?” Barlow exclaimed, startled. It was not often that a swell lady—who of course couldn't be a swell (he did not know who Maggie was)—voluntarily walked into his office with such a proposition.

“I can give you some real information about a big game that's being worked up. In fact, I can arrange for you to be present when the game is pulled off, and you can make the arrests.”

“Who are the people?” he asked brusquely.

Maggie knew it would be fatal to mention Barney or Old Jimmie, if that story about Barlow's protection contained any truth. Again inspiration, or incredibly swift thinking, came to her aid, and with sure touch she twanged one of Barlow's rawest and most responsive nerves.

“Larry Brainard is behind it all. He's been doing a lot of things on the quiet these last few months. Here is where you can get his whole crowd.”

“Larry Brainard!”

Maggie did not yet know what had befallen Larry, and Gavegan had neglected to telephone his Chief of the arrest. Even had Gavegan done so, the large and vague manner in which Maggie had stated the situation would have stirred Barlow's curiosity.

“All right. I'll put a couple of my good men on the case. Where shall I send 'em?”

“A couple of your good men won't do. I want only one of your good men—and that man is yourself.”

“Me!” growled Barlow. “What kind of floor-walker d'you think I am? I'm too busy!”

“Too busy to take personal charge, and get personal credit, for one of the biggest cases that ever went through this office?”

Maggie had sought only to excite his vanity. But unknowingly she had also appealed to something else in him: his very deep concern in the hostile activities of the District Attorney's office. If this girl told the truth, then here might be his chance to display such devotion to duty as to turn up some such sensational case as would make this investigation from the District Attorney's office seem to the public an unholy persecution and make the chagrined District Attorney, who was very sensitive to public opinion, think it wiser to drop the whole matter.

“How do I know you're not trying to string me?—or get me out of the way of something bigger?—or hand me the double-cross?”

“I shall be there all the time, and if you don't like the way the thing develops you can arrest me. I suppose you've got some kind of law, with a stiff punishment attached, about conspiracy against an officer.”

“Well—give me all the dope, and tell me where I'm to come,” he yielded ungraciously.

“I've told you all I am going to tell. All the important 'dope' you'll get first-hand by being present when the thing happens. The place to come is the Hotel Grantham—room eleven-forty-two—at eight-thirty sharp.”

To this Barlow grudgingly agreed. He might have exulted inwardly, but he would have shown no outer graciousness if a committee of citizens had handed him a reward of a million dollars and an engrossed testimonial to his unprecedented services. Barlow did not know how to thank any one.

Five minutes after she left Headquarters Maggie was in the back room of the Duchess's pawnshop, which her rapid planning had fixed upon as the next station at which she should stop. She did not waste a moment in coming to the point with the Duchess.

“Red Hannigan is really the most important of Larry's old friends who are out to get him, isn't he?” she asked.

“Yes—in a way. I mean among those who honestly think Larry has turned stool and squealer. He trusted Larry more than any one else—and now he hates Larry more than any one else. Rather natural, since he was two months in the Tombs before he could get bail—because he thinks Larry squealed on him.”

“How's he stand with his crowd?”

“No one higher. They'd all take his word for anything.”

“Can you find him at once?” Maggie pursued breathlessly.

That was a trifling question to ask the Duchess; since all the news of her shadowy world came to her ears in some swift obscure manner.

“Yes. If it is necessary.”

“It's terribly necessary! If I can't get him, the whole thing may fail!”

“What thing?” demanded the Duchess.

“It might all sound impossibly foolish!” cried the excited, desperate Maggie. “You might tell me so—and discourage me—and I simply must go ahead! I feel rather like—like a juggler who's trying for the first time to keep a lot of new things going in the air all at once. But I think there's a chance that I may succeed! I'll tell you just one thing. It all has to do with Larry. I think I may help Larry.”

“I'll get Red Hannigan,” the Duchess said briefly. “What do you want with him?”

“Have him come to the Hotel Grantham—room eleven-forty-two—at eight-fifteen sharp!”

“He'll be there,” said the Duchess.

There followed a swirling taxi-ride back to the Grantham, and a rapid change into her most fetching evening gown (she had not even a thought of dinner) to play her bold part in the drama which she was excitedly writing in her mind and for which she had just engaged her cast. She was on fire with terrible suspense: would the other actors play their parts as she intended they should?—would her complicated drama have the ending she was hoping for?

Had she been in a more composed, matter-of-fact state of mind, this play which she was staging would have seemed the crudest, most impossible melodrama—a thing both too absurd and too dangerous for her to risk. But Maggie was just then living through one of the highest periods of her life; she cared little what happened to her. And it is just such moods that transform and elevate what otherwise would be absurd to the nobly serious; that changes the impossible into the possible; just as an exalted mood or mind is, or was, the primary difference between Hamlet, or Macbeth, or Lear, and any of the forgotten Bowery melodramas of a generation now gone.

She had been dressed for perhaps ten nervous minutes when the bell rang. She admitted a slight, erect, well-dressed, middle-aged man with a lean, thin-lipped face and a cold, hard, conservative eye: a man of the type that you see by the dozens in the better hotels of New York, and seeing them you think, if you think of them at all, that here is the canny president of some fair-sized bank who will not let a client borrow a dollar beyond his established credit, or that here is the shrewd but unobtrusive power behind some great industry of the Middle West.

“I'm Hannigan,” he announced briefly. “I know you're Old Jimmie Carlisle's girl. The Duchess told me you wanted me on something big. What's the idea?”

“You want to get Larry Brainard, don't you?—or whoever it was that squealed on you?”

There was a momentary gleam in the hard, gray eyes. “I do.”

“That's why you're here. In a little over an hour, if you stay quiet in the background, you'll have what you want.”

“You've got a swell-looking lay-out here. What's going to be pulled off?”

“It's not what I might tell you that's going to help you. It's what you hear and see.”

“All right,” said the thin-lipped man. “I'll pass the questions, since the Duchess told me to do as you said. She's square, even if she does have a grandson who's a stool. I suppose I'm to be out of sight during whatever happens?”

“Yes.”

In the room there were two spacious closets, as is not infrequent in the better class of modern hotels; and it had been these two closets which had been the practical starting-point of Maggie's development of Dick Sherwood's proposition. To one of these she led Hannigan.

“You'll be out of sight here, and you'll get every word.”

He stepped inside, and she closed the door. Also she took the precaution of locking it. She wished Hannigan to hear, but she wished no such contretemps as Hannigan bursting forth and spoiling her play when it had reached only the middle of its necessary action.

Barlow came promptly at half-past eight. He brought news which for a few moments almost completely upset Maggie's delicately balanced structure.

“I know who you are now,” he said brusquely. “And part of your game's cold before you start.”

“Why?—What part?”

“Just after you left Headquarters Officer Gavegan showed up. He had this Larry Brainard in tow—had pinched him out on Long Island.”

This announcement staggered Maggie; for the moment made all her strenuous planning seem to have lost its purpose. In her normal condition she might either have given up or betrayed her real intent. But just now, in her super-excited state, in which she felt she was fighting desperately for others, she was acting far above her ordinary capacity; and she was making decisions so swift that they hardly seemed to proceed from conscious thought. So Barlow, vigilant watcher of faces that he was, saw nothing unusual in her expression or manner.

“What did you do with him?” she asked.

“Left him with Gavegan—and with Casey, who had just come in. Trailing with Brainard was a swell named Hunt, cussing mad. He was snorting around about being pals with most of the magistrates, and swore he'd have Brainard out on bail inside an hour. But what he does don't make any difference to me. Your proposition seems to me dead cold, since I've already got Brainard, and got him right. I wouldn't have bothered to have come here at all except for something you let drop about the pals he might have been working with these last few months.”

“That's exactly it,” she caught him up. “I never thought that you'd catch Larry Brainard here. How could I, when, if you know me as you say, you also know that he and I are in different camps—are fighting each other? What's going to happen here is something that will show you the people Larry Brainard's been mixed up with—that will turn up for you the people you want.”

“But what's going to happen?” Barlow demanded.

To this Maggie answered in much the same strain she had used with Hannigan a few minutes earlier. “I told you down at Headquarters that everything that's important you'll learn by being present when the thing actually happened. What I tell you doesn't count for much—it might not be true. It's what you see and hear for yourself when things begin to happen. You're to wait in here.” She led him to the second large closet and opened the door.

“See here,” he demanded, “are you framing something on me?”

“How can I, in a big hotel like this? And even if I were to try, you'd certainly make me pay for it later. Besides, you've got a gun. Please go in quick; I'm expecting the people here any minute. And don't make a sound that might arouse their suspicions and queer everything.”

He entered, and she closed the door. So carefully that he did not hear it, she locked the door; no more than in Hannigan's case did she want Barlow to come bungling into a scene before it had reached its climax.

All was now ready for the curtain to rise. Quivering all through she waited for Barney Palmer, whose entrance was to open her drama. She glanced at her wrist-watch which she had left upon the little lacquered writing-table. Ten minutes of nine. Ten more minutes to wait. She felt far more of sickening suspense than ever did any young playwright on the opening night of his first play. For she was more than merely playwright. In her desperate, overwrought determination Maggie had assumed for herself the super-mortal role of dea ex machina. And in those moments of tense waiting Maggie, who so feverishly loathed all she had been, was not at all sure whether she was going to succeed in her part of goddess from the machine.

At five minutes to nine there was a ring. She gave a little jump at the sound. That was Barney. Though generally when Barney came he used the latch-key which his assumed dear cousinship, and the argued possibility of their being out and thus causing him to wait around in discomfort, Miss Grierson's sense of propriety had unbent far enough to permit him to possess. The truth was, of course, that Barney had desired the key so that he might have most private conferences with Maggie, at any time necessity demanded, without the stolidly conscientious Miss Grierson ever knowing what had happened and being therefore unable to give dangerous testimony.

Maggie crossed and opened the door. But instead of Barney Palmer, it was Larry who stepped in. He quickly closed the door behind him.

“Larry!” she cried startled. “Why—why, I thought the police had you!”

“They did. But Hunt was with me, and he got hold of a magistrate who would have made Hunt a present of the Tombs and Police Headquarters if he had owned them.”

“Then you're out on bail?”

“Got out about ten minutes ago. Hunt didn't have any property he could put up as security, so he 'phoned my grandmother. She walked in with an armload of deeds. Why, she must own as much property in New York as the Astor Estate.”

“Larry, I'm so glad!” And then, remembering what, according to her plan, was due to begin to happen almost any moment, she exclaimed in dismay: “But, Larry, oh, why did you come here now!”

“I wanted to know—you understand—what you had decided to do after learning about your father. And I wanted to tell you that, after all my great boasts to you, I seem to have failed in every boast. Item one, the police have got me. Item two, since the police have got me, my old pals will also most likely get me. Item three, when I was arrested at Cedar Crest Miss Sherwood learned that I had known you all along and believes I was part of a conspiracy to clean out the family; so she chucked me—and I've lost what I believed my big chance to make good. So, you see, Maggie, it looks as if you were right when you predicted that I was going to fail in everything I said I was going to do.”

“Larry—Miss Sherwood believes that!” she breathed. And then she remembered again, and caught his arm with sudden energy. “Larry, you mustn't stay here!”

“Why not?”

Her answer was almost identical with one she had given the previous evening. “Because Barney Palmer may be here the next minute!”

His response was in sense also identical. “Then I'll stay right here. There's no one I want to see as much as Barney Palmer. And this time I'll have it out with him!”

Maggie was in consternation at this unexpected twist which was not in the brain-manuscript of her play at all—which indeed threatened to take her play right out of her hands. “Please go, Larry!” she cried desperately. “And please give me a chance! You'll spoil it all if you stay!”

“I'm going to stay right here,” was his grim response.

She realized there was no changing him. She glimpsed a closet door behind him, and caught at the chance of saving at least a fragment of her drama.

“Stay, then but, Larry, please give me a chance to do what I want to do! Please!” By this time she had dragged him across the room and had started to unlock the closet. “Just wait in here—and keep quiet! Please!”

He took the key from her fumbling hands, unlocked the door, and slipped the key into his pocket. “All right—I'll give you your chance,” he promised.

He stepped through the door and closed it upon himself, entombing himself in blackness. The next moment the glare of a pocket flash was in his face, blinding him.

“Larry Brainard!” gritted a low voice in the darkness.

Larry could see nothing, but there was no mistaking that voice. “Red Hannigan!” he exclaimed.

“Yes—you damned squealer! And I'm going to finish you off right here!”

The light clicked out, and a pair of lean hands almost closed on Larry's wind-pipe. But Larry caught the wrists of the older man in a grip the other could not break. There was a brief struggle in the blackness of the closet, then the slighter man stood still with his wrists manacled by Larry's hands.

“Evidently you haven't a gun on you, Red, or you, wouldn't have tried this,” Larry commented. “Anyhow, you couldn't have got away with killing in a big hotel, whether you had strangled me or shot me. I don't blame you for being sore at me, Red—only you've got me all wrong. But you and I are evidently here for the same purpose: to get next to something that's going to happen out in the room. What do you say, Red?—let's suspend hostilities for the present. You've got me where you can follow me, and you can get me any time.”

“You bet I'll get you!” declared Hannigan. And then after a few more words an armistice was agreed upon between the two men in the closet and silently, tensely, they stood in the dark awaiting whatever was to happen.

Outside Maggie, that amateur playwright who had tried so desperately to prearrange events, that inexperienced goddess from the machine, stood in a panic of fear and suspense the like of which she had never known.