CHAPTER XX
Larry's new problem was the most difficult and delicate dilemma of his
life--this divided loyalty: to balk Maggie and the two men behind
her without revealing the truth about Maggie to Dick, to protect Dick
without betraying Maggie. It certainly was a trying, baffling situation.
He had no such foolish idea that he could change Maggie by exposing
her. At best he would merely render her incapable of continuing this
particular course; he would increase her bitterness and hostility to
him. Anyhow, according to the remnants of his old code, that wouldn't be
playing fair--particularly after her aiding his escape when he had been
trapped.
Upon only one point was he clear, and on this he became more settled
with every hour: whatever he did he must do with the idea of a
fundamental awakening in Maggie. Merely to foil her in this one scheme
would be to solve the lesser part of his problem; Maggie would be left
unchanged, or if changed at all the change would be toward a greater
hardness, and his major problem would be made more difficult of
solution.
He considered many ways. He thought of seeing Maggie again, and once
more appealing to her. That he vetoed, not because of the danger to
himself, but because he knew Maggie would not see him; and if he again
did break in upon her unexpectedly, in her obstinate pride she would
heed nothing he said. He thought of seeing Barney and Old Jimmie and
somehow so throwing the fear of God into that pair that they would
withdraw Maggie from the present enterprise; but even if he succeeded
in so hazardous an undertaking, again Maggie would be left unchanged.
He thought of showing Miss Sherwood the hidden portrait of Maggie, of
telling her all and asking her aid; but this he also vetoed, for it
seemed a betrayal of Maggie.
He kept going back to one plan: not a plan exactly, but the idea upon
which the right plan might be based. If only he could adroitly, with his
hand remaining unseen, place Maggie in a situation where circumstances
would appeal conqueringly to her best self, to her latent sense of
honor--that was the idea! But cudgel his brain as he would, Larry could
not just then develop a working plan whose foundation was that idea.
But even if Larry had had a brilliant plan it would hardly have been
possible for him to have devoted himself to its execution, for two days
after his visit to Maggie at the Grantham, the Sherwoods moved out to
their summer place some forty miles from the city on the North Shore of
Long Island; and Larry was so occupied with routine duties pertaining
to this migration that at the moment he had time for little else. Cedar
Crest was individual yet typical of the better class of Long Island
summer residences. It was a long white building of many piazzas and many
wings, set on a bluff looking over the Sound, with a broad stretch of
silken lawn, and about it gardens in their June glory, and behind the
house a couple of hundred acres of scrub pine.
On the following day, according to a plan that had been worked out
between Larry and Miss Sherwood, Joe Ellison appeared at Cedar Crest
and was given the assistant gardener's cottage which stood apart on
the bluff some three hundred yards east of the house. He was a tall,
slightly bent, white-haired man, apparently once a man of physical
strength and dominance of character and with the outer markings of a
gentleman, but now seemingly a mere shadow of the forceful man of his
prime. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison had barely escaped that greatest
of prison scourges, tuberculosis.
The roses were given over to his care. For a few brief years during the
height of his prosperity he had owned a small place in New Jersey and
during that period had seemingly been the country gentleman. Flowers had
been his hobby; so that now he could have had no work which would have
more suited him than this guardianship of the roses. For himself he
desired no better thing than to spend what remained of his life in this
sunlit privacy and communion with growing things.
He gripped Larry's hand when they were first alone in the little
cottage. “Thanks, Larry; I'll not forget this,” he said. He said little
else. He did not refer to his prison life, or what had gone before it.
He had never asked Larry, even while in prison together, about Larry's
previous activities and associates; and he asked no questions now.
Apparently it was the desire of this silent man to have the bones of his
own past remain buried, and to leave undisturbed the graves of others'
mistakes.
A retiring, unobtrusive figure, he settled quickly to his work. He
seemed content, even happy; and at times there was a far-away, exultant
look in his gray eyes. Miss Sherwood caught this on several occasions;
it puzzled her, and she spoke of it to Larry. Larry understood what lay
behind Joe's bearing, and since the thing had never been told to him as
a secret he retold that portion of Joe's history he had recited to the
Duchess: of a child who had been brought up among honorable people,
protected from the knowledge that her father was a convict--a child Joe
never expected to see and did not even know how to find.
Joe Ellison became a figure that moved Miss Sherwood deeply: content to
busy himself in his earthly obscurity, ever dreaming and gloating over
his one great sustaining thought--that he had given his child the best
chance which circumstances permitted; that he had removed himself from
his child's life; that some unknown where out in the world his child
was growing to maturity among clean, wholesome people; that he never
expected to make himself known to his child. The situation also moved
Larry profoundly whenever he looked at his old friend, merging into a
kindly fellowship with the earth.
But while busy with new affairs at Cedar Crest, Larry was all the while
thinking of Maggie, and particularly of his own dilemma regarding Maggie
and Dick. But the right plan still refused to take form in his brain.
However, one important detail occurred to him which required immediate
attention. If his procedure in regard to Hunt's pictures succeeded in
drawing the painter from his hermitage, nothing was more likely than
that Hunt unexpectedly would happen upon Maggie in the company of Dick
Sherwood. That might be a catastrophe to Larry's unformed plan; it had
to be forestalled if possible. Such a matter could not be handled in a
letter, with the police opening all mail coming to the Duchess's house.
So once more he decided upon a secret visit to the Duchess's house. He
figured that such a visit would be comparatively without risk, since the
police and Barney Palmer and the gangsters Barney had put upon his trail
all still believed him somewhere in the West.
Accordingly, a few nights after they had settled at Cedar Crest, he
motored into New York in a roadster Miss Sherwood had placed at his
disposal, and after the necessary precautions he entered Hunt's studio.
The room was dismantled, and Hunt sat among his packed belongings
smoking his pipe.
“Well, young fellow,” growled Hunt after they had shaken hands, “you see
you've driven me from my happy home.”
“Then Mr. Graham has been to see you?”
“Yes. And he put up to me your suggestion about a private exhibition.
And I fell for it. And I've got to go back among the people I used
to know. And wear good clothes and put on a set of standardized good
manners. Hell!”
“You don't like it?”
“I suppose, if the exhibition is a go, I'll like grinning at the bunch
that thought I couldn't paint. You bet I'll like that! You, young
fellow--I suppose you're here to gloat over me and to try to collect
your five thousand.”
“I never gloat over doing such an easy job as that was. And I'm not here
to collect my bet. As far as money is concerned, I'm here to give you
some.” And he handed Hunt the check made out to “cash” which Mr. Graham
had sent him for the Italian mother.
“Better keep that on account of what I owe you,” advised Hunt.
“I'd rather you'd hold it for me. And better still, I'd rather call the
bet off in favor of a new bargain.”
“What's the new proposition for swindling me?”
“You need a business nursemaid. What commission do you pay dealers?”
“Been paying those burglars forty per cent.”
“That's too much for doing nothing. Here's my proposition. Give me ten
per cent to act as your personal agent, and I'll guarantee that your
total percentage for commissions will be less than at present, and that
your prices will be doubled. Of course I can't do much while the police
and others are so darned interested in me, so if you accept we'll just
date the agreement from the time I'm cleared.”
“You're on, son--and we'll just date the agreement from the present
moment, A.D.” Again Hunt gripped Larry's hand. “You're all to the good,
Larry--and I'm not giving you half enough.”
That provided Larry with the opening he had desired. “You can make it up
to me.”
“How?”
“By helping me out with a proposition of my own. To come straight to the
point, it's Maggie.”
“Maggie?”
“I guess you know how I feel there. She's got a wrong set of ideas, and
she's fixed in them--and you know how high-spirited she is. She's out in
the world now, trying to put something crooked over which she thinks is
big. I know what it is. I want to stop her, and change her. That's my
big aim--to change her. The only way I can at this moment stop what
she is now doing is by exposing her. And mighty few people with a wrong
twist are ever set right by merely being exposed.”
“I guess you're right there, Larry.”
“What I want is a chance to try another method on Maggie. If she's
handled right I think she may turn out a very different person from what
she seems to be--something that may surprise both of us.”
Hunt nodded. “That was why I painted her picture. Since I first saw her
I've been interested in how she was going to come out. She might become
anything. But where do I fit in?”
“She's flying in high company. It occurred to me that, when you got back
to your own world, you might meet her, and in your surprise you might
speak to her in a manner which would be equivalent in its effect to an
intentional exposure. I wanted to put you on your guard and to ask you
to treat her as a stranger.”
“That's promised. I won't know her.”
“Don't promise till you know the rest.”
“What else is there to know?”
“Who the sucker is they're trying to trim.” Larry regarded the other
steadily. “You know him. He's Dick Sherwood.”
“Dick Sherwood!” exploded Hunt. “Are you sure about that?”
“I was with Maggie the other night when Dick came to have supper with
her; he didn't see me. Besides, Dick has told me about her.”
“How did they ever get hold of Dick?”
“Dick's the easiest kind of fish for two such smooth men as Barney and
Old Jimmie when they've got a clever, good-looking girl as bait, and
when they know how to use her. He's generous, easily impressed, thinks
he is a wise man of the world and is really very gullible.”
“Have they got him hooked?”
“Hard and fast. It won't be his fault if they don't land him.”
The painter gazed at Larry with a hard look. Then he demanded abruptly:
“Show Miss Sherwood that picture of Maggie I painted?”
“No. I had my reasons.”
“What you going to do with it?”
“Keep it, and pay you your top price for it when I've got the money.”
“H'm! Told Miss Sherwood what's doing about Dick?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I thought of doing it, then I decided against it. For the same reason
I just gave you--that it might lead to exposure, and that exposure would
defeat my plans.”
“You seem to be forgetting that your plan leaves Dick in danger. Dick
deserves some consideration.”
“And I'm giving it to him,” argued Larry. “I'm thinking of him as much
as of Maggie. Or almost as much. His sister and friends have pulled him
out of a lot of scrapes. He's not a bit wiser or better for that kind
of help. And it's not going to do him any good whatever to have some one
step in and take care of him again. He's been a good friend to me, but
he's a dear fool. I want to handle this so he'll get a jolt that will
waken him up--make him take his responsibilities more seriously--make
him able to take care of himself.”
“Huh!” grunted Hunt. “You've certainly picked out a few man-sized jobs
for yourself: to make a success of the straight life for yourself--to
come out ahead of the police and your old pals--to make Maggie love the
Ten Commandments--to put me across--to make Dick into a level-headed
citizen. Any other little item you'd like to take on?”
Larry ignored the irony of the question. “Some of those things I'm going
to do,” he said confidently. “And any I see I'm going to fail in, I'll
get warning to the people involved. But to come back to your promise:
are you willing to give your promise now that you know all the facts?”
Hunt pulled for a long moment at his pipe. Then he said almost gruffly:
“I guess you've guessed that Isabel Sherwood is about the most important
person in the world to me?”
That was the nearest Hunt had ever come to telling that he loved Miss
Sherwood. Larry nodded.
“I'm in bad there already. Suppose your foot slips and everything about
Dick goes wrong. What'll be my situation when she learns I've known all
along and have just stood by quietly and let things happen? See what
I'll be letting myself in for?”
“I do,” said Larry, his spirits sinking. “And of course I can understand
your decision not to give your promise.”
“Who said I wouldn't give my promise?” demanded Hunt. “Of course I
give my promise! All I said was that the weather bureau of my bad toe
predicts that there's likely to be a storm because of this--and I want
you to use your brain, son, I want you to use your brain!”
He upreared his big, shag-haired figure and gripped Larry's hand.
“You're all right, Larry--and here's wishing you luck! Now get to hell
out of here before Gavegan and Casey drop in for a cup of tea, or your
old friends begin target practice with their hip artillery. I want a
little quiet in which to finish my packing.
“And say, son,” he added, as he pushed Larry through the door, “don't
fall dead at the sight of me when you see me next, for I'm likely to be
walking around inside all the finery and vanity of Fifth Avenue.”