第74章

"That's easy answered, Barney. The last time we were all together, you'd come to take Maggie away. This is that same scene reproduced--only this time I've come to take Maggie away."

"What's that?" snapped Barney.

Larry's voice threw off its assumed geniality, and became drivingly hard. "And to get Maggie to come, I've been telling her the kind of a bird you are, Barney Palmer! Oh, I've got the straight dope on you!

I've been telling her how you framed me, and were able to frame me because you are Chief Barlow's stool."

Barney went as near white as it was possible for him to become, and his mouth sagged. " What--what--" he stammered.

"I've been telling her that you are the one who really squealed on Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt."

"You're a damned liar!" Barney burst out, and instantly from beneath his left arm he whipped an automatic which he thrust against Larry's stomach. "Take that back, damn you, or I'll blow you straight to hell!"

"Barney!--Larry!" interjected Maggie in sickened fright.

"This is nothing to worry over, Maggie," Larry said. He looked back at Barney. "Oh, I knew you would flash a gun on me at some stage of the game. But you're not going to shoot."

"You'll see, if you don't take that back!"

Larry realized that his hot blood had driven him into an enterprise of daring, in which only bluff and the playing of his highest cards could help him through.

"You don't think I was such a fool as to walk into this place without taking precautions," he said contemptuously. "You won't shoot, Barney, because since I knew I might meet you and you'd pull a gun, I had myself searched by two friends just before I came up here. They'll testify I was not armed. They know you, and know you so well that they'll be able to identify the thing in your hand as your gun. So no matter what Maggie and Jimmie may testify, the verdict will be cold-blooded murder and the electric chair will be your finish. And that's why I know you won't shoot. So you might as well put the gun away."

Barney neither spoke nor moved.

"I've called your bluff, Barney," Larry said sharply. "Put that gun away, or I'll take it from you!"

Barney's glare wavered. The pistol sank from its position. With a lightning-swift motion Larry wrenched it from Barney's hand.

"Guess I'd better have it, after all," he said, slipping it into a pocket. "Keep you out of temptation."

And then in a subdued voice that was steely with menace: "I'm too busy to attend to you now, Barney--but, by God, I'm going to square things with you for the dirt you've done me, and I'm going to show you up for a stool and a squealer!" He wheeled on Old Jimmie. "And the only reason I'll be easy with you, Jimmie Carlisle, is because you are Maggie's father--though you're the rottenest thing as a father God ever let breathe!"

Old Jimmie shrank slightly before Larry's glower, and his little eyes gleamed with the fear of a rat that is cornered. But he said nothing.

Larry turned his back upon the two men. "We're through with this bunch, Maggie. Put on a hat and a wrap, and let's go. We can send for your things."

"No you don't, Maggie," snarled Barney, before Maggie could speak.

Old Jimmie made his first positive motion since entering the room. He shifted quickly to Maggie's side and seized her arm.

"You're my daughter, and you stay with me!" he ordered. "I brought you up, and you do exactly what I tell you to! You're not going with Larry--he's lying about Barney. You stay with me!"

"Come on, let's go, Maggie," repeated Larry.

"You stay with me!" repeated Jimmie.

Thus ordered and appealed to, Maggie was areel with contradicting thoughts and impulses while the three men awaited her action. In fact she had no clear thought at all. She never knew later what determined her course at this bewildered moment: perhaps it was partly a continuance of her doubt of Larry, perhaps partly once more sheer momentum, perhaps her instinctive feeling that her place was with the man she believed to be her father.

"Yes, I'll stay with you," she said to Old Jimmie.