第81章

Larry undressed, had a bath, shaved, dressed again, and started to work. But that day the most Larry did was abstractedly going through the motions of work. He was completely filled with the situation and its many questions, and with the suspense of waiting for Maggie to come and of how he was going to manage to see her privately.

The meeting, however, proved no difficulty; for Maggie, who arrived at four, had come primarily on Larry's account and she herself maneuvered the encounter. While they were on the piazza, Dick having gone into the house for a fresh supply of cigarettes, and Miss Sherwood being in an animated discussion with Hunt, Maggie said:

"Miss Sherwood, I've never had a real look down at the Sound from the edge of your bluff. Do you mind if Mr. Brandon shows me?"

"Not at all. Tea won't be served for half an hour, so take your time.

Have Mr. Brandon show you the view from just the other side of that old rose-bench; that's the best view."

They walked away chatting mechanically until they were in a garden seat behind the rose-bench. The rose-bench was a rather sorry affair, for it had been set out in this exposed place by a former gardener who had forgotten that the direct winds from the Sound are malgracious to roses. However, it screened the two, and was far enough removed so that ordinary tones would not carry to the house.

"Did your grandmother get you word about the police?" Maggie asked with suppressed excitement as soon as they were seated.

"Yes. She came out here about midnight."

"Then why, while you still had time, didn't you get farther away from New York than this?"

"If I'm to be caught, I'm to be caught; in the meantime, this is as safe a place as any other for me. Besides, I wanted to have at least one more talk with you--after something new grandmother told me about you."

"Something new about me?" echoed Maggie, startled by his grave tone.

"What?"

"About your father," he said, watching closely for the effect upon her of his revelations.

"What about my father? What's he been doing that I don't know about?"

"You do not know a single thing that your father has done."

"What!"

"Because you do not know who your father is."

"What!" she gasped.

"Listen, Maggie. What I'm going to tell you may seem unbelievable, but you've got to believe it, because it's the truth. I can see that you have proofs if you want proofs. But you can accept what I tell you as absolute facts. You are by birth a very different person from what you believe yourself. Your father is not Jimmie Carlisle. And your mother--"

"Larry!" She tensely gripped his arm.

"Your mother was of a good family. I imagine something like Miss Sherwood's kind--though not so rich and not having such social standing. She died when you were born. She never knew what your father's business actually was; he passed for a country gentleman. He was about the smoothest and biggest crook of his time, and a straight crook if there is such a thing."

"Larry!" she breathed.

"He kept this gentleman-farmer side of his life and his marriage entirely hidden from his crook acquaintances; that is, from all except one whom he trusted as his most loyal friend. Before you were old enough to remember, he was tripped up and sent away on a twenty-year sentence."

"And he's--he's still in prison?" whispered Maggie.

Larry did not heed the interruption. "He had developed the highest kind of ambition for you. He wanted you to grow up a fine simple woman like your mother--something like Miss Sherwood. He did not want you ever to know the sort of life he had known; and he did not want you to be handicapped by the knowledge that you had a crook for a father. He still had intact your mother's fortune, a small one, but an honest one. So he put you and the money in the hands of his trusted friend, with the instructions that you were to be brought up as the girls of the nicest families are brought up, and believing yourself an orphan."

"That friend of his, Larry?" she whispered tensely.

"Jimmie Carlisle."

"O--oh!"

"I don't know what Jimmie Carlisle's motives were for what he has done. Perhaps to get your money, perhaps some grudge against your father, which he was afraid to show while your father was free, for your father was always his master. But Old Jimmie has brought you up exactly contrary to the orders he received. If revenge was Old Jimmie's motive, his cunning, cowardly brain could not have conceived a more diabolical revenge, one that would hurt your father more. Till a few years ago, when word was sent to your father that Old Jimmie was dead, Jimmie regularly wrote your father about the success of his plan, about how splendidly you were developing and getting on with the best people. And your father--I knew him in prison--now believes you have grown up into exactly the kind of young woman he planned."

"Larry!" she choked in a numbed voice. "Larry!"

"Your father is now as happy as it is possible for him to be, for he has lived for years and still lives in the belief that his great dream, the only big thing left for him to do, has come to pass: that somewhere out in the world is his daughter, grown into a nice, simple, wholesome young woman, with a clean, wholesome life before her. And though she is the one thing in all the world to him, he never intends to see her again for fear that his seeing her might somehow result in an accident that would destroy her happy ignorance. Maggie, can you conceive the tremendous meaning to your father of what he believes he has created? And can you conceive the tremendous difference between the dream he lives upon, and the reality?"

She was white, staring, wilted. For once all the defiance, self-confidence, bravado, melted out of her, and she was just an appalled and frightened young girl.

After a moment she managed to repeat the question Larry had ignored:

"Is my real father--still in prison?"

"You'd like to see your real father?" he asked her.

"I think--I'd like to have a glimpse of him," she breathed.