第15章

Larry was still gazing at where Maggie had stood, flashing her defiance at him, when Hunt came thumping down the stairway.

"Hello, young fellow; what you been doing to Maggie?" demanded the painter.

"Why?"

"Her door was open when I came by and I called to her. She didn't answer, but, oh, what a look! What's in the air?"

And then Hunt noted the Duchess apart in her corner. "I say, Duchess--what were Larry and Maggie rowing about?"

"Grandmother!" Larry exclaimed with a start. "I'd forgotten you were here! You must have heard it all--go ahead and tell him."

"Tell him yourself," returned the Duchess.

Larry and Hunt took chairs, and Larry gave the gist of what he had said about his decision to Barney and Old Jimmie and Maggie. The Duchess, still motionless at her desk as she had been all during Larry's scene with Old Jimmie and Barney, and then his scene with Maggie, regarded her grandson with that emotionless, mummified face in which only the red-margined eyes showed life or interest.

"So you're going to go straight, eh?" queried Hunt. The big painter sat with his long legs sprawling in front of him, a black pipe in his mouth, and looked at Larry skeptically. "You certainly did hand a jolt to your friends who'd been counting on you. And yet you're sore because they were sore at you and didn't believe in you."

"Did I say that I was sore?" queried Larry.

"No, but you're acting it. And you're sore at Maggie because she didn't believe that you could make good or that you'd stick it out.

Well, I don't believe you will either."

"You're a great painter, Hunt, and a great cook--but I don't give a damn what you believe."

"Keep your shirt on, young fellow," Hunt responded, puffing imperturbably. "I say I believe you won't win out--but that's not saying I don't want you to win out. If that's what you want to do, go to it, and may luck be with you, and may the devil stay in hell. The morals of other people are out of my line--none of my business. I'm a painter, and it's my business to paint people as I find them. But Maggie certainly did put her finger on the tough spot in your proposition: for a crook to find a job and win the confidence of people. It's up grade all the way, and it takes ten men's nerve to stick it out to the top. Yep, Maggie was sure right!"

And then the Duchess broke her accustomed silence with her thin croak:

"Never you mind Maggie! She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn't know anything."

Larry looked in surprise at his grandmother. There was a flash in her old eyes; but the next moment the spark was gone.

"Sure you're up against it--but I'll be rooting for you." Hunt was grinning. "But say, young fellow, what made you decide to vote the other ticket?"

Larry was trained at reading faces; and in the rough-hewn, grinning features of Hunt he read good-fellowship. Larry swiftly responded in kind, for from the moment he had pulled the mask of being a fool from the painter and shown him to be a real artist, he had felt drawn toward this impecunious swashbuckler of the arts. So he now repeated the business motives which he had presented to Barney and Old Jimmie.

As Larry talked he became more spontaneous, and after a time he was telling of the effect upon him of seeing various shrewd men locked up and unexercised in prison. And presently his reminiscence settled upon one prison acquaintance: a man past middle age, clever in his generation, who had already done some fifteen years of a long sentence. He was, said Larry, grim and he rarely spoke; but a close, wordless friendship had developed between them. Only once, in an unusually relaxed mood, had the old convict spoken of himself, but what he had then said had had a greater part in rousing Larry to his new decision than the words of any other man.

"It was a queer story Joe let out," continued Larry. "Before he was sent away he had a kid, just a baby whose mother was dead. He told me he wanted to have his kid brought up without ever knowing anything about the kind of people he knew and the kind of life he'd lived. He wanted it to grow up among decent people. He had money put away and he had an old friend, a pal, that he'd trust with anything. So he turned over his money and his baby to his friend, and gave orders that the kid was to be brought up decent, sent to school, and that the kid was never to know anything about Joe. Of course the baby was too young then ever to remember him; and when he gets out he's going to keep absolutely clear of the kid's life--he wants his kid to have the best possible chance."

"What is his whole name, and what was he sent up for?" queried the Duchess, that flickering fire of interest once more in her old eyes.

"Joe Ellison. He was an old-time confidence man. He got caught in a jam--there had been drinking--there was some shooting--and he had attempted manslaughter tacked on to the charge of swindling. But Joe said everybody had been drinking and that the shooting was accidental."

"Joe Ellison--I knew him," said the Duchess. "He was about the cleverest man of his day. But I never knew he had a child. Who was this best friend of his?"