第21章

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.