CHAPTER XIII

When Maggie rode away forever from the house of the Duchess with Barney

Palmer and her father, after the denunciation of Larry by the three of

them as a stool and a squealer, she was the thrilled container of about

as many diversified emotions as often bubble and swirl in a young girl

at one and the same time. There was anger and contempt toward Larry:

Larry who had weakly thrown aside a career in which he was a master, and

who had added to that bad the worse of being a traitor. There was the

lifting sense that at last she had graduated; that at last she was set

free from the drab and petty things of life; that at last she was riding

forth into the great brilliant world in which everything happened--forth

into the fascinating, bewildering Unknown.

Barney and Old Jimmie talked to each other as the taxicab bumped through

the cobbled streets, their talk being for the most part maledictions

against Larry Brainard. But their words were meaningless sounds to the

silent Maggie, all of whose throbbing faculties were just then merged

into an excited endeavor to perceive the glorious outlines of the

destiny toward which she rode. However, as the cab turned into Lafayette

Place and rolled northward, her curiosity about the unknown became

conscious and articulate.

“Where am I going?” she asked.

“First of all to a nice, quiet hotel.” It was Barney who answered;

somehow Barney had naturally moved into the position of leader, and as

naturally her father had receded to second place. “We've got everything

fixed, Maggie. Rooms reserved, and a companion waiting there for you.”

“A companion!” exclaimed Maggie. “What for?”

“To teach you the fine points of manners, and to help you buy clothes.

She's a classy bird all right. I advertised and picked her out of a

dozen who applied.”

“Barney!” breathed Maggie. She was silent a dazed moment, then asked:

“Just--just what am I going to do?”

“Listen, Maggie: I'll spill you the whole idea. I'd have told you

before, but it's developed rather sudden, and I've not had a real

chance, and, besides, I knew you'd be all for it. Jimmie and I have

canned that stock-selling scheme for good--unless an easy chance for it

develops later. Our big idea now is to put YOU across!” Barney believed

that there might still remain in Maggie some lurking admiration

for Larry, some influence of Larry over her, and to eradicate these

completely by the brilliance of what he offered was the chief purpose of

his further quick-spoken words. “To put you across in the biggest kind

of a way, Maggie! A beautiful, clever woman who knows how to use her

brains, and who has brainy handling, can bring in more money, and in a

safer way, than any dozen men! And I tell you, Maggie, I'll make you a

star!”

“Barney!... But you haven't told me just what I'm to do.”

“The first thing will be just a try-out; it'll help finish your

education. I've got it doped out, but I'll not tell you till later. The

main idea is not to use you in just one game, Maggie, but to finish you

off so you'll fit into dozens of games--be good year after year. A big

actress who can step right into any big part that comes her way. That's

what pays! I tell you, Maggie, there's no other such good, steady

proposition on earth as the right kind of woman. And that's what you're

going to be!”

Maggie had heard much this same talk often before. Then it had been

vague, and had dealt with an indefinite future. Now she was too dazzled

by this picture of near events which the eager Barney was drawing to be

able to make any comment.

“I'll be right behind you in everything, and so will Jimmie,” Barney

continued in his exciting manner--“but you'll be the party out in front

who really puts the proposition over. And we'll keep to things where the

police can't touch us. Get a man with coin and position tangled up right

in a deal with a woman, and he'll never let out a peep and he'll come

across with oodles of money. Hundreds of ways of working that. A strong

point about you, Maggie, is you have no police record. Neither have I,

though the police suspect me--but, as I said, I'll keep off the stage

as much as I can. I tell you, Maggie, we're going to put over some great

stuff! Great, I tell you!”

Maggie felt no repugnance to what had been said and implied by Barney.

How could she, when since her memory began she had lived among people

who talked just these same things? To Maggie they seemed the natural

order. At that moment she was more concerned by a fascinating necessity

which Barney's flamboyant enterprise entailed.

“But to do anything like that, won't I need clothes?”

“You'll need 'em, and you'll have 'em! You're going to have one of

the swellest outfits that ever happened. You'll make Paris ashamed of

itself!”

“No use blowing the whole roll on Maggie's clothes,” put in Old Jimmie,

speaking for the first time.

Barney turned on him caustically, almost savagely. “You're a hell of a

father, you are--counting the pennies on his own daughter! I told you

this was no piker's game, and you agreed to it--so cut out the idea

you're in any nickel-in-the-slot business!”

Old Jimmie felt physical pain at the thought of parting from money on

such a scale. His earlier plans concerning Maggie had never contemplated

any such extravagance. But he was silenced by the dominant force behind

Barney's sarcasm.

“Miss Grierson--she's your companion--knows what's what about clothes,”

continued Barney to Maggie. “Here's the dope as I've handed it to her.

You're an orphan from the West, with some dough, who's come to New York

as my ward and Jimmie's and we want you to learn a few things. To her

and to any new people we meet I'm your cousin and Jimmie is your uncle.

You've got that all straight?”

“Yes,” said Maggie.

“You're to use another name. I've picked out Margaret Cameron for you.

We can call you Maggie and it won't be a slip-up--see? If any of the

coppers who know you should tumble on to you, just tell 'em you dropped

your own name so's to get clear of your old life. They can't do anything

to you. And tell 'em you inherited a little coin; that's why you're

living so swell. They can't do anything about that either. ... Here's

where we get out. Got a sitting-room, two bedrooms and a bath hired for

you here. But we'll soon move you into a classier hotel.”

The taxi had stopped in front of one of the unpretentious, respectable

hotels in the Thirties, just off Fifth Avenue, and Maggie followed the

two men in. This hotel did, indeed, in its people, its furnishings, its

atmosphere, seem sober and commonplace after the Ritzmore; but at the

Ritzmore she had been merely a cigarette-girl, a paid onlooker at the

gayety of others. Here she was a real guest--here her great life was

beginning! Maggie's heart beat wildly.

Up in her sitting-room Barney introduced her to Miss Grierson, then

departed with a significant look at Old Jimmie, saying he would return

presently and leaving Old Jimmie behind. Old Jimmie withdrew into a

corner, turned to the racing part of the Evening Telegram, which,

with the corresponding section of the Morning Telegraph, was his sole

reading, and left Maggie to the society of Miss Grierson.

Maggie studied this strange new being, her hired “companion,” with

furtive keenness; and after a few minutes, though she was shyly obedient

in the manner of an untutored orphan from the West, she had no fear of

the other. Miss Grierson was a large, flat-backed woman who was on the

descending slope of middle age. She was really a “gentlewoman,” in

the self-pitying and self-praising sense in which those who advertise

themselves as such use that word. She was all the social forms, all

the proprieties. She was deferentially autocratic; her voice was

monotonously dignified and cultured; and she was tired, which she had a

right to be, for she had been in this business of being a gentlewomanly

hired aunt to raw young girls for over a quarter of a Century.

To the tired but practical eye of Miss Grierson, here was certainly a

young woman who needed a lot of working over to make into a lady.

And though weary and unthrillable as an old horse, Miss Grierson was

conscientious, and she was going to do her best.

Maggie made a swift survey of her new home. The rooms were just ordinary

hotel rooms, furnished with the dingy, wholesale pretentiousness of

hotels of the second rate. But they were the essence of luxury compared

to her one room at the Duchess's with its view of dreary back yards.

These rooms thrilled her. They were her first material evidence that she

was now actually launched upon her great adventure.

Maggie had dinner in her sitting-room with Old Jimmie and Miss

Grierson--and of that dinner, mediocre and sloppy, and chilled by its

transit of twelve stories from the kitchen, Miss Grierson, by way of an

introductory lesson, made an august function, almost diagrammatic in

its educational details. After the dinner, with Miss Grierson's slow and

formal aid, which consisted mainly in passages impressively declaimed

from her private book of decorum, Maggie spent two hours in unpacking

her suitcase and trunk, and repacking her scanty wardrobe in drawers of

the chiffonier and dressing-table; a task which Maggie, left to herself,

could have completed in ten minutes.

Maggie was still at this task in her bedroom when she heard Barney enter

her sitting-room. “He got away,” she heard him say in a low voice to Old

Jimmie.

She slipped quickly out of her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

An undefined something had suddenly begun to throb within her.

“Who got away, Barney?” she demanded in a hushed tone.

Her look made Barney think rapidly. He was good at quick thinking, was

Barney. He decided to tell the truth--or part of it.

“Larry Brainard.”

“Got away from what?” she pursued.

“The police. They were after him on some charge. And some of his pals

were after him, too. They were out to get him because he had squealed on

Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt. Both parties were closing in on him

at about the same time. But Larry got a tip somehow, and made his

get-away.”

“When did it happen?”

“Must have happened a little time after we all left the Duchess's.”

“But--but, Barney--how did you learn it so soon?”

“Just ran into Officer Gavegan over on Broadway and he told me,” lied

Barney. He preferred not to tell her that he had been upon the scene

with Little Mick and Lefty Ed; for the third figure which Larry had

descried through the misty shadows had indeed been Barney Palmer. Also

Barney preferred not to tell what further subtle share he had had in the

causes for Larry's flight.

“Do you think he--he made a safe get-away?”

“Safe for a few hours. Gavegan told me they'd have him rounded up by

noon to-morrow.” Barney was more conscious of Maggie's interest than was

Maggie herself, and again was desirous of destroying it or diverting it.

“Generally I'm for the other fellow against the police. But this time

I'm all for the coppers. I hope they land Larry--he's got it coming to

him. Remember that he's a stool and a squealer.”

And swiftly Barney switched the subject. “Let's be moving along,

Jimmie.”

He drew Maggie out into the hall, to make more certain that Miss

Grierson would not overhear. “Well, Maggie,” he exulted, “haven't I made

good so far in my bargain to put you over?”

“Yes.”

“Of course we're going slow at first. That's how you've got to

handle big deals--careful. But you'll sure be a knock-out when that

she-undertaker in there gets you rigged out in classy clothes. Then

the curtain will go up on the real show--and it's going to be a big

show--and you'll be the hit of the piece!”

With that incitement to Maggie's imagination Barney left her; and Old

Jimmie followed, furtively giving Maggie a brief, uncertain look.