第104章

There was swift relief on the faces of Barney and Old Jimmie; to be instantly dispelled by Chief Barlow's next statement which followed his last with only a pause for breath:

"The main thing we want is to stick these two crooks away." He turned on Barney and Old Jimmie. "I've just learned you two fellows are the birds I want for that Gregory stock business. I've got you for fair on that. It'll hold you a hundred times tighter than any conspiracy charge. Casey, Gavegan--hustle these two crooks out of here."

The next moment Casey and Gavegan had handcuffs on the prisoners and were leading them out.

"Good for you, Larry," Casey whispered warmly as he went by with Barney. "I knew you were going to win out, though it might be an extra-inning game!"

At the door Barlow paused. "I hope I've done everything all right, Miss Sherwood?"

"Yes--as far as I know, Mr. Barlow."

Again Barlow started out, and again turned. "And you, Brainard," he said, rather grudgingly, "I guess you needn't worry any about that charge against you. It'll be dropped."

And with that Barlow followed his men and his prisoners out of the room.

Then for a moment there was silence. As Larry saw and felt that moment, it was a moment so large that words would only make a faltering failure in trying to express it. He himself was suddenly free of all clouds and all dangers. He had succeeded in what he had been trying to do with Maggie. A father and a daughter were meeting, with each knowing their relationship, for the first time. There was so much to be said, among all of them, that could only be said as souls relaxed and got acquainted with each other.

It was so strained, so stupendous a moment that it would quickly have become awkward and anti-climacteric but for the tact of Miss Sherwood.

"Mr. Brainard," she began, in her smiling, direct manner, with a touch of brisk commonplace in it which helped relieve the tension, "I want to apologize to you for the way I treated you late this afternoon. As I said, I've just had a talk with Dick and he's told me everything--except some things we may all have to tell each other later. I was entirely in the wrong, and you were entirely in the right. And the way you've handled things seems to have given Dick just that shock which you said he needed to awaken him to be the man it's in him to be. I'm sure we all congratulate you."

She gave Larry no chance to respond. She knew the danger, in such an emotional crisis as this, of any let-up. So she went right on in her brisk tone of ingratiating authority.

"I guess we've all been through too much to talk. You are all coming right home with me. Mr. Brainard and Mr. Ellison live there, I'm their boss, and they've got to come. And you've got to come, Miss Ellison, if you don't want to offend me. I won't take 'no.' Besides, your place is near your father. Wear what you have on; in a half a minute you can put enough in a bag to last until to-morrow. To-morrow we'll send in for the rest of your things--whatever you want--and send a note to your Miss Grierson, paying her off. You and your father will have my car," she concluded, "Mr. Brainard and Dick will ride in Dick's car, and Mr. Hunt will take me."

And as she ordered, so was it.

For fifteen minutes--perhaps half an hour--after it rolled away from the Grantham Hotel there was absolute stillness in Miss Sherwood's limousine, which she had assigned to Maggie and her father. Maggie was near emotional collapse from what she had been through; and now she was sitting tight in one corner, away from the dark shadow in the other corner that was her newly discovered father who had cared for her so much that he had sought to erase from her mind all knowledge of his existence. She wanted to say something--do something; she was torn with a poignant hunger. But she was so filled with pulsing desires and fears that she was impotent to express any of the million things within her.

And so they rode on, dark shadows, almost half the width of the deeply cushioned seat between them. Thus they had ridden along Jackson Avenue, almost into Flushing, when the silence was broken by the first words of the journey. They were husky words, yearning and afraid of their own sound, and were spoken by Maggie's father.

"I--I don't know what to call you. Will--will Maggie do?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"I'm--I'm not much," the husky voice ventured on; "but what you said about going away--for my sake--do you think you need to do it?"

"I've made--such a mess of myself," she choked out.

"Other people were to blame," he said. "And out of it all, I think you're going to be what--what I dreamed you were. And--and--"

There was another stifling silence. "Yes?" she prompted.

"I wanted to keep out of your life--for your sake," he went on in his strained, suppressed voice. "But--but if you're not ashamed of me now that you know all"--in the darkness his groping hand closed upon hers--"I wish you wouldn't--go away from me, Maggie."

And then the surging, incoherent thing in her that bad been struggling to say itself this last half-hour, suddenly found its voice in a single word:

"Father!" she cried, and flung her arms around his neck.

"Maggie!" he sobbed, crushing her to him.

All the way to Cedar Crest they said not another word; just clung to each other in the darkness, sobbing--the first miraculous embrace of a father and daughter who had each found that which they had never expected to have.