CHAPTER IX

Maggie, as she mounted to her room, was hardly conscious of the ring

of menace in Barney's voice; but once she was in bed, his tone and his

words came back to her and stirred a strange uneasiness in her mind.

Barney was angry; Barney was cunning; Barney would stop at nothing to

gain his ends. What might be behind his threatening words?

The next morning as she was coming in with milk for her breakfast

coffee, she met Larry in the Duchess's room behind the pawnshop. He

smilingly planted himself squarely in her way.

“See here, Maggie--aren't you ever going to speak to a fellow?”

Something within her surged up impelling her to tell him of Barney's

savage yet unformulated threat. The warning got as far as her tongue,

and there halted, struggling.

Her strange, fixed look startled Larry. “Why, what's the matter,

Maggie?” he exclaimed.

But her pride, her settled determination to unbend to him in no way and

to have no dealings with him, were stronger than her impulse; and the

struggling warning remained unuttered.

“Nothing's the matter,” she said, and brushed past him and hurried up

the stairway.

At times during the day, while tutoring with Mr. Bronson, Larry thought

of Maggie's strange look. And his mind was upon it late in the afternoon

when he entered the little street. But as he neared his grandmother's

house all such thought was banished by Detective Gavegan of the Central

Office stepping from the pawnshop and blocking the door with his big

figure. There was grim, triumphant purpose on the hard features of

Gavegan, conceited by nature and trained to harsh dominance by long rule

as a petty autocrat.

“Hello, Gavegan,” Larry greeted him pleasantly. “Gee, but you look

tickled! Did the Duchess give you a bigger loan than you expected on the

Carnegie medal you just hocked?”

“You'll soon be cuttin' out your line of comedy.” Gavegan slipped his

left arm through Larry's right. “You're comin' along with me, and you'd

better come quiet.”

Larry stiffened. “Come where?”

“Headquarters.”

“I haven't done a thing, Gavegan, and you know it! What do you want me

for?”

“Me and the Chief had a little talk about you,” leered Gavegan. “And now

the Chief wants to have a little personal talk with you. He asked me to

round you up and bring you in.”

“I've done nothing, and I'll not go!” Larry cried hotly.

“Oh, yes, you will!” Gavegan withdrew his right hand from his coat

pocket where it had been resting in readiness. In the hand, its thong

about his wrist, was a short leather-covered object filled with lead.

“I've got my orders, and you'll come peaceably, or--But I'd just as soon

you'd resist, for I owe you something for the punch you slipped over on

me the other night.”

Larry, taut with the desire to strike, gazed for a moment into the

glowering face of the detective. Gavegan, gripping his right arm, with

that bone-crushing slug-shot itching for instant use, was apparently

master in the present circumstances. But before Larry's quick mind had

decided upon a course, the door of the pawnshop opened and closed, and a

voice said sharply:

“Nothing doing on that rough stuff, Gavegan!” The speaker was now on

Larry's left side, a heavy-faced man in a black derby. “Larry, better be

a nice boy and come with us.”

“Oh, it's you, Casey!” said Larry. “If you say I've got to go, I'll

go--for you're one white copper, even if you do have Gavegan for a

partner. Come on. What're we standing here for?”

The trio made their way out of the narrow street, and after some fifteen

minutes of walking through the twisting byways of that part of the city,

they passed through the granite doorway at Headquarters and entered the

office of Deputy Commissioner Barlow, Chief of the Detective Bureau.

Barlow was talking over the telephone in a growling staccato, and the

three men sat down. After a moment Barlow banged the receiver upon its

hook, and turned upon them. He had a clenched, driving face, with small,

commanding eyes. It was his boast that he got results, that it was his

policy to make people do what you told 'em. He had no other code.

“Well, Brainard,” he snapped, “here you are again. What you up to now?”

“Going to try the straight game, Chief,” returned Larry.

“Don't try to put that old bunk over on me!”

“It's not bunk, Chief. It's the real stuff.”

“Cut it out, I say! Don't you suppose I had a clever bird like you

picked up the minute you landed in the city, and have had you covered

ever since? And if you are going straight, what about the session you

had with Barney Palmer and Old Jimmie Carlisle the very night you blew

in? And I'm on to this bluff of your going to that business institute.

So come across, Brainard! I've got your every move covered!”

“I've already come across, Chief,” replied Larry, trying to keep his

temper in the face of the other's bullying manner. “I told Barney and

Old Jimmie that I was through with the old game, and through with them

as pals at the old game--that's all there was to that meeting. I'm going

to that business institute for the same reason that every other person

goes there--to learn. That's all there is to the whole business, Chief:

I'm going to go straight.”

Chief Barlow, hunched forward, his undershot jaw clenched on a cigar

stub, regarded Larry steadily with his beady, autocratic eyes. Barlow

was trained to penetrate to the inside of men's minds, and he recognized

that Larry was in earnest.

“You mean you think you are going to go straight,” Barlow remarked

slowly and meaningly.

“I know I am going to go straight,” Larry returned evenly, meeting

squarely the gaze of the Chief of Detectives.

“Do you realize, young man,” Barlow continued in the same measured,

significant tone, “that whether you go straight, and how you go

straight, depends pretty much on me?”

“Mind making that a little clearer, Chief?”

“I'll show you part of my hand--just remember that I'm holding back my

high cards. I don't believe you're going to go straight, so we'll start

with the proposition that you're not going to run straight and work on

from there. You're clever, Brainard--I hand you that; and all the classy

crooks trust you. That's why I had picked you out for what I wanted long

before you left stir. Brainard, you're wise enough to know that some

of our best pinches come from tips handed us from the inside.

Brainard”--the slow voice had now become incisive, mandatory--“you're

not going to go straight. You're going to string along with Barney and

Old Jimmie and the rest of the bunch--we'll protect you--and you're

going to slip us tips when something big is about to be pulled off.”

Larry, experienced with police methods though he was, could hardly

believe this thing which was being proposed to him, Larry Brainard. But

he controlled himself.

“If I get you, Chief, you are suggesting that I become a police stool?”

“Exactly. We'll never tip your hand. And any little thing you pull off

on your own we'll not bother you about. And, besides, we'll slip you a

little dough regular on the quiet.”

“And all you want me to do in exchange,” Larry asked quietly, “is to

hand up my pals?”

“That's all.”

Larry found it required his all of strength to control himself; but he

did.

“There are only three small objections to your proposition, Chief.”

“Yes?”

“The first is, I shall not be a stool.”

“What's that?”

“And the second is, I wouldn't squeal on a pal to you even if I were a

crook. And the third is what I said in the beginning: I'm not going to

be a crook.”

Barlow's squat, powerful figure arose menacingly. Casey also stood up.

“I tell you you ARE going to be a crook!” Barlow's big fist crashed down

on his desk in a tremendous exclamation point. “And you're going to work

for me exactly as I tell you!”

“I have already given you my final word,” said Larry.

“You--you--” Barlow almost choked at this quiet defiance. His face

turned red, his breath came in a fluttering snarl, his powerful

shoulders hunched up as if he were about to strike. But he held back his

physical blows.

“That's your ultimatum?”

“If you care to call it so--yes.”

“Then here's mine! I told you I was holding back my high cards. Either

you do as I say, and work with Gavegan and Casey, or you'll not be able

to hold a job in New York! My men will see to that. And here's another

high card. You do as I've said, or I'll hang some charge on you, one

that'll stick, and back up the river you'll go for another stretch!

There's an ultimatum for you to think about!”

It certainly was. Larry gazed into the harsh, glaring face, set in

fierce determination. He knew that Barlow, as part of his policy, loved

to break down the spirit of criminals; and he knew that nothing so

roused Barlow as opposition from a man he considered in his power. Close

beside the Chief he saw the gloating, malignant face of Gavegan; Casey,

who had been restless since the beginning of the scene, had moved to the

window and was gazing down into Center Street.

For a moment Larry did not reply. Barlow mistook Larry's silence for

wavering, or the beginning of an inclination to yield.

“You turn that over in your noodle,” Barlow drove on. “You're going

to go crooked, anyhow, so you might as well go crooked in the only way

that's safe for you. I'm going to have Gavegan and Casey watch you, and

if in the next few days you don't begin to string along with Barney and

Old Jimmie and that bunch, and if you don't get me word that your answer

to my proposition is 'yes,' hell's going to fall on you! Now get out of

here!”

Larry got out. He was liquid lava of rage inside; but he had had enough

to do with police power to know that it would help him not at all to

permit an eruption against a police official while he was in the very

heart of the police stronghold.

He walked back toward his own street in a fury, beneath which was

subconsciously an element of uneasiness: an uneasiness which would have

been instantly roused to caution had he known that Barney Palmer had

this hour and more been following him in a taxicab, and that across the

street from the car's window Barney's sharp face had watched him enter

Police Headquarters and had watched him emerge.

Home reached, Larry briefly recounted his experience at Headquarters to

Hunt and the Duchess. The painter whistled; the Duchess blinked and said

nothing at all.

“Maggie was more right than she knew when she first said you were facing

a tough proposition!” exclaimed Hunt. “Believe me, young fellow, you're

certainly up against it!”

“Can you beat it for irony!” said Larry, pacing the floor. “A man wants

to go straight. His pals ask him to be a crook, and are sore because

he won't be a crook. The police ask him to be a crook, and threaten him

because he doesn't want to be a crook. Some situation!”

“Some situation!” repeated Hunt. “What're you going to do?”

“Do?” Larry halted, his face set with defiant determination. “I'm going

to keep on doing exactly what I've been doing! And they can all go to

hell!”