第43章

The next morning Larry tried to force his mind to attend strictly to Miss Sherwood's affairs. But in this effort he was less than fifty per cent effective. His experience of the night before had been too exciting, too provocative of speculation, too involved with what he frankly recognized to be the major interest of his life, to allow him to apply himself with perfect and unperturbed concentration to the day's routine. Constantly he was seeing the transformed Maggie in the cerise evening gown with the fan of green plumes--seeing her elaborate setting in her suite at the Grantham--hearing that vaguely familiar but unplaceable voice outside her door--recalling the frenzied effort with which Maggie had so swiftly effected his escape.

This last matter puzzled him greatly. If she were so angered at him as she had declared, if she so distrusted him, why had she not given him up when she had had him at her mercy? Could it be that, despite her words, she had an unacknowledged liking for him? He did not dare let himself believe this.

Again and again he thought of this adventure in whose very middle Maggie now was, and of whose successful issue she had proudly boasted to him. It was indeed something big, as she had said; that establishment at the Grantham was proof of this. Larry could now perceive the adventure's general outlines. There was nothing original in what he perceived; and the plan, so far as he could see it, would not have interested him in the least as a novel creation of the brain were not Maggie its central figure, and were not Barney and Old Jimmie her directing agents. A pretty woman was being used as a lure to some rich man, and his infatuation for her was to cause him to part with a great deal of money: some variation of this ancient idea, which has a thousand variations--that was the plan.

Obviously the enterprise was not directed at some gross victim whose palate might permit his swallowing anything. If any one item essentially proved this, it was the item of the overwhelmingly respectable chaperon. Maggie was being presented as an innocent, respectable, young girl; and the victim, whoever he was, was the type of man for whom only such a type of girl would have a compelling appeal.

And this man--who was he? Ever and again he tried to place the man's voice, with its faintly familiar quality, but it kept dodging away like a dream one cannot quite recall.

The whole business made Larry rage within himself. Maggie to be used in such a way! He did not blame Maggie, for he understood her. Also he loved her. She was young, proud, willful, had been trained to regard such adventures as colorful and legitimate; and had not lived long enough for experience to teach her otherwise. No, Maggie was not to blame. But Old Jimmie! He would like to twist Old Jimmie's neck! But then Old Jimmie was Maggie's father; and the mere fact of Old Jimmie being Maggie's father would, he knew, safeguard the old man from his wrath even were he at liberty to go forth and act.

He cursed his enforced seclusion. If only he were free to go out and do his best in the open! But then, even if he were, his best endeavors would have little influence upon Maggie--with her despising and distrusting him as she did, and with her so determined to go ahead in her own way.

Once during the morning, he slipped from the library into his room and gazed at the portrait of Maggie that Hunt had given him the night before: Maggie, self-confident, willful, a beautiful nobody who was staring the world out of countenance; a Maggie that was a thousand possible Maggies. And as he gazed he thought of the wager he had made with Hunt, and of his own rather scatter-brained plannings concerning it. He removed Maggie's portrait from the fellowship of the picture of the Italian mother, and hid it in his chiffonier. Whatever he might do in his endeavor to make good his boast to Hunt, for the present he would regard Maggie's portrait as his private property. To use the painting as he had vaguely planned, before he had been surprised to find it Maggie's portrait, would be to pass it on into other possession where it might become public--where, through some chance, the Maggie of the working-girl's cheap shirt-waist might be identified with the rich Miss Cameron of the Grantham, to Maggie's great discomfiture, and possibly to her entanglement with the police.

When Miss Sherwood came into the library a little later, Larry tried to put Maggie and all matters pertaining to his previous night's adventure out of his mind. He had enough other affairs which he was trying adroitly to handle--for instance, Miss Sherwood and Hunt; and when his business talk with her was ended, he remarked:

"I saw Mr. Hunt last evening."

He watched her closely, but he could detect no flash of interest at Hunt's name.

"You went down to your grandmother's?"

"Yes."

"That was a very great risk for you to take," she reproved him. "I'm glad you got back safely."

Despite the disturbance Maggie had been to his thoughts, part of his brain had been trying to make plans to forward this other aim; so he now told Miss Sherwood of his wager with Hunt and his bringing away a picture--he said "one picture." He wanted to awaken the suppressed interest each had in the other; to help bridge or close the chasm which he sensed had opened between them. So he brought the picture of the Italian mother from his room. She regarded it critically, but with no sign of approval or disapproval.

"What do you think of it?" she asked.

"It's a most remarkable piece of work!" he said emphatically--wishing he could bring in that picture of Maggie as additional evidence supporting his opinion.

She made no further comment, and it was up to Larry to keep the conversation alive. "What is the most Mr. Hunt ever was paid for a painting? I mean one of what he swears at as his `pretty pictures'?"

"I believe about two thousand dollars."

That was part of the information necessary to Larry's plan.