CHAPTER XIV

A block away from the hotel Barney parted from Old Jimmie. For a space

Barney thought of his partner. Barney had quick eyes which were quite

capable of taking in two things at once; and while he had seen the

excited glow his final speech had brought back into Maggie's face, he

had also caught that swift look of uncertainty in the lean, cunning face

of Old Jimmie: a look of one who is eager to go on, yet sees himself

frustrated by his own eagerness. To Barney it was a puzzling, suspicious

look.

As Barney made his way toward a harbor of refreshment he wondered about

Old Jimmie--not in the manner Larry had wondered about a father bringing

his daughter up into crooked ways--but he wondered what kind of a man

beneath his shrewd, yielding, placating manner Old Jimmie really was,

how far he was to be trusted, whether he was in this game on the level

or whether he was playing some very secret hand of his own. Though he

had known and worked with Old Jimmie for years, Barney had never been

admitted to the inner chambers of the older man's character. He sensed

that there were hidden rooms and twisting passages; and of this much he

was certain, that Old Jimmie was sly and saturnine.

Well, he would be on guard that Old Jimmie didn't put anything over on

your obliging servant, Barney Palmer!

This was the era of legal prohibition, but thus far Barney had not been

severely discommoded by the action of the representatives of America's

free institutions in Washington, for Barney knew his New York. In an

ex-saloon on Sixth Avenue, which nominally sold only the soft drinks

permitted by the wise men of the Capital, Barney leaned at his ease upon

the bar and remarked: “Give me some of the real stuff, Tim, and forget

that eye-dropper the boss bought you last week.” Barney had a drink of

the real stuff, and then another drink, in the measuring of neither of

which had an eye-dropper been involved.

After that, much heartened, he put two dollars upon the bar and went

his way. His course took the dapper Barney into three of the gayest

restaurants in the Times Square section; and in these Barney paused long

enough to speak to a few after-theater supper-parties. For this was the

hour when Barney paid his social calls; he was very strict with himself

upon this point. Barney was really by way of being a rising figure in

this particular circle of New York society composed of people who had

or believed they had an interest in the theater, of expensively gowned

women the foreground of whose lives was most attractive, but whose

background was perhaps wisely kept out of the picture, and of moneyed

young men who gloried in the idea that they were living the life. These

social calls from gay table to gay table, at all of which Barney was

welcome--for here Barney showed only his most attractive surfaces, his

most brilliant facets--were in truth a very important part of Barney's

business.

A little later, alone at a corner table in a quieter restaurant, Barney

was eating his supper and making an inventory of his prospects. He was

in a very exultant mood. The whiskey he had drunk had given broad

wings to his self-satisfaction; and what he was now sipping from his

tea-cup--it was not tea, for Barney was on the proper terms with his

waiter here--this draught from his tea-cup tipped these broad wings at a

yet more soaring angle.

Yes, he had certainly put it over so far. And Maggie would certainly

prove a winner. Those fair women he had chatted with as he had moved

from table to table, why, they'd be less than dirt compared to Maggie

when Maggie was rigged out and readied up and the stage was set. And it

had been he, Barney Palmer, who had been the first to discover Maggie's

latent possibilities!

He had an eye beyond mere surfaces, had Barney. He had used women in the

past in putting over many of his more private transactions (and had done

so partly for the reason that using women so was eminently “safe”--this

despite his violent outburst of sneering disdain at Larry when the

latter had spoken of safety): some of them professional sharpers, some

unscrupulous actresses of the lower flight--such women as he had just

chatted with in the restaurants where he had made his brief visits. But

such, he now recognized, were rather BLASEES, rather too obvious. They

were the blown rose. But Maggie was fresh, and once she was properly

broken in, she would be his perfect instrument. Yes, perfect!

Barney's plans soared on. Some day, when it fitted in just right with

his plans, he was going to marry Maggie, It was only recently that he

had seen her full charms, and still more recently that he had determined

upon marriage. That decision had materially altered certain details of

the career Barney had blue-printed for himself. Barney had long regarded

marriage as an asset for himself; a valuable resource which he must hold

in reserve and not liquidate, or capitalize, until his own market was at

its peak. He knew that he was good-looking, an excellent dancer, that he

had the metropolitan finish. He had calculated that sometime some rich

girl, perhaps from the West, who did not know the world too well, would

fall under the spell of his charms; and he would marry her promptly

while she was still infatuated, before she could learn too much about

him. Such had been Barney's idea of marriage for himself; which is very

similar to ideas held by thousands of gentlemen, young and otherwise,

in this broad land of ours, who consider themselves neither law-breakers

nor adventurers.

But that was all changed now. Now it was Maggie, though Maggie in

pursuit of their joint advantage might possibly first have to go through

the marriage ceremony with some other man. Of course, a very, very rich

man! Barney already had this man marked. He hoped, though, they would

not have to go so far as marriage. However, he was willing to wait his

proper turn. As he had told Maggie, you could not put over a big thing

in a hurry.

As for Larry, he'd certainly handled that business in swell fashion!

He'd certainly put a crimp in what had been developing between Larry and

Maggie. And he'd get Larry in time, too. The drag-net was too large and

close of mesh for Larry to hope to escape it. The word he'd slipped that

boob Gavegan had sure done the business! And the indirect way he had

tipped off the police about Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt and had

then made his pals think Larry had squealed--that was sure playing the

game, too! Jack and Red would get off easy--there was nothing on them;

but little old Barney Palmer had certainly used his bean in the way

he had set the machinery of the police and the under-world in motion

against Larry!

While other occupants of the cafe, particularly the women, stole looks

at the handsome, flawlessly dressed, interesting-looking Barney, Barney

had yet another of those concoctions which the discreet waiter served in

a tea-cup. He'd done a great little job, you bet! Not another man in New

York could have done better. He was sure going to put Maggie across! And

in doing so, he was going to do what was right by yours truly.

All seemed perfect in Barney's world....

And while Barney sat exulting over triumphs already achieved and those

inevitably to be achieved, Maggie lay in her new bed dreaming exultant

dreams of her own: heedless of the regular snoring which resounded in

the adjoining room--for the excellent Miss Grierson, while able to

keep her every act in perfect form while in the conscious state,

unfortunately when unconscious had no more control of the goings-on of

her mortal functions than the lowliest washwoman. Maggie's flights

of fancy circled round and round Larry. She stifled any excuses or

insurgent yearnings for him. He'd deserved what he had got. Already,

contrary to his predictions, she had made a tremendous advance into her

brilliant future. She would show him! Yes, she would show him! Oh, but

she was going to do things!

But while she dreamed thus, shaping a magnificent destiny--an

independent, self-engineered young woman, so very, very confident of the

great future she was going to achieve through the supremacy of her own

will and her own abilities--no slightest surmise came into her mind that

Barney Palmer was making plans by which her will was to count as naught

and by which he was to be the master of her fate, and that the furtive,

yielding Old Jimmie was also dreaming a patient dream in which she was

to be a mere chess-piece which was to capture a long-cherished game.

And yet, after all, Maggie's dreams, aside from the peculiar twist life

had given them, were fundamentally just the ordinary dreams of youth: of

willful confident youth, to whom but a small part of the world has yet

been opened, who in fact does not yet half know its own nature.