第32章

When Maggie rode away forever from the house of the Duchess with Barney Palmer and her father, after the denunciation of Larry by the three of them as a stool and a squealer, she was the thrilled container of about as many diversified emotions as often bubble and swirl in a young girl at one and the same time. There was anger and contempt toward Larry: Larry who had weakly thrown aside a career in which he was a master, and who had added to that bad the worse of being a traitor. There was the lifting sense that at last she had graduated; that at last she was set free from the drab and petty things of life; that at last she was riding forth into the great brilliant world in which everything happened--forth into the fascinating, bewildering Unknown.

Barney and Old Jimmie talked to each other as the taxicab bumped through the cobbled streets, their talk being for the most part maledictions against Larry Brainard. But their words were meaningless sounds to the silent Maggie, all of whose throbbing faculties were just then merged into an excited endeavor to perceive the glorious outlines of the destiny toward which she rode. However, as the cab turned into Lafayette Place and rolled northward, her curiosity about the unknown became conscious and articulate.

"Where am I going?" she asked.

"First of all to a nice, quiet hotel." It was Barney who answered; somehow Barney had naturally moved into the position of leader, and as naturally her father had receded to second place. "We've got everything fixed, Maggie. Rooms reserved, and a companion waiting there for you."

"A companion!" exclaimed Maggie. "What for?"

"To teach you the fine points of manners, and to help you buy clothes.

She's a classy bird all right. I advertised and picked her out of a dozen who applied."

"Barney!" breathed Maggie. She was silent a dazed moment, then asked:

"Just--just what am I going to do?"

"Listen, Maggie: I'll spill you the whole idea. I'd have told you before, but it's developed rather sudden, and I've not had a real chance, and, besides, I knew you'd be all for it. Jimmie and I have canned that stock-selling scheme for good--unless an easy chance for it develops later. Our big idea now is to put YOU across!" Barney believed that there might still remain in Maggie some lurking admiration for Larry, some influence of Larry over her, and to eradicate these completely by the brilliance of what he offered was the chief purpose of his further quick-spoken words. "To put you across in the biggest kind of a way, Maggie! A beautiful, clever woman who knows how to use her brains, and who has brainy handling, can bring in more money, and in a safer way, than any dozen men! And I tell you, Maggie, I'll make you a star!"

"Barney! . . . But you haven't told me just what I'm to do."

"The first thing will be just a try-out; it'll help finish your education. I've got it doped out, but I'll not tell you till later.

The main idea is not to use you in just one game, Maggie, but to finish you off so you'll fit into dozens of games--be good year after year. A big actress who can step right into any big part that comes her way. That's what pays! I tell you, Maggie, there's no other such good, steady proposition on earth as the right kind of woman. And that's what you're going to be!"

Maggie had heard much this same talk often before. Then it had been vague, and had dealt with an indefinite future. Now she was too dazzled by this picture of near events which the eager Barney was drawing to be able to make any comment.

"I'll be right behind you in everything, and so will Jimmie," Barney continued in his exciting manner--"but you'll be the party out in front who really puts the proposition over. And we'll keep to things where the police can't touch us. Get a man with coin and position tangled up right in a deal with a woman, and he'll never let out a peep and he'll come across with oodles of money. Hundreds of ways of working that. A strong point about you, Maggie, is you have no police record. Neither have I, though the police suspect me--but, as I said, I'll keep off the stage as much as I can. I tell you, Maggie, we're going to put over some great stuff! Great, I tell you!"

Maggie felt no repugnance to what had been said and implied by Barney.

How could she, when since her memory began she had lived among people who talked just these same things? To Maggie they seemed the natural order. At that moment she was more concerned by a fascinating necessity which Barney's flamboyant enterprise entailed.

"But to do anything like that, won't I need clothes?"

"You'll need 'em, and you'll have 'em! You're going to have one of the swellest outfits that ever happened. You'll make Paris ashamed of itself!"

"No use blowing the whole roll on Maggie's clothes," put in Old Jimmie, speaking for the first time.

Barney turned on him caustically, almost savagely. "You're a hell of a father, you are--counting the pennies on his own daughter! I told you this was no piker's game, and you agreed to it--so cut out the idea you're in any nickel-in-the-slot business!"

Old Jimmie felt physical pain at the thought of parting from money on such a scale. His earlier plans concerning Maggie had never contemplated any such extravagance. But he was silenced by the dominant force behind Barney's sarcasm.

"Miss Grierson--she's your companion--knows what's what about clothes," continued Barney to Maggie. "Here's the dope as I've handed it to her. You're an orphan from the West, with some dough, who's come to New York as my ward and Jimmie's and we want you to learn a few things. To her and to any new people we meet I'm your cousin and Jimmie is your uncle. You've got that all straight?"

"Yes," said Maggie.

"You're to use another name. I've picked out Margaret Cameron for you.