第94章

But when Barney's latch-key slid into the door and Barney, in a smart dinner jacket, came in, Maggie was herself again. Indeed she was better than herself, for there rushed to her support that added power which she had just been despairing of, which carries some people through an hour of crisis, and which may occasionally lift an actor above himself when fortune gives him a difficult yet splendid part which is the great chance of his career.

And Maggie showed to the eye that she was better than her best, for Barney exclaimed the instant he was beside her: "Gee, Maggie, you look like the Queen of Sheba, whoever that dame was! Any guy would fall for you to-night--and fall so hard that he'd break, or go broke!"

But Barney was too eager to await any response. "What's behind the hurry-up call you sent in? Anything broken yet?"

"Something big! But sit down. There's a lot to tell. And I must tell it quick--before my"--she could not force herself to say "father"--"before Old Jimmie comes, and Dick."

"Then Dick's coming?"

"Yes. Things have taken a twist so that everything breaks to-night.

But sit down, and I'll tell you everything."

She had noted that the door behind which Larry stood, and to which he had captured the key, was open a bare half-inch. It looked no more suspicious than any closet door that by accident had swung free of its latch, but by deft maneuvering Maggie managed so that Barney sat at the table with his back toward both closets.

"Go to it, Maggie," he urged.

The plan which had swiftly developed from Dick Sherwood's idea required that she should tell much that was the truth and much that was not truth, and required that she should play with every faculty and every attraction she possessed upon Barney's tremendous vanity and upon his jealous admiration of her. She had to make him believe more in her as a pal than ever before; she had to make him want her more as a woman than ever before. And at this moment she felt herself thrillingly equal to this vampire role her over-stimulated sense of justice had commanded her to undertake.

"Things have gone great," she began, speaking concisely, yet trying not in this eager brevity to lose the convincing effect that she would be the complete mistress of any enterprise to which she yielded her interest. "Dick Sherwood proposed to me again, and this time I said `yes.' I saw that he was ready for anything, so I took some things into my hands. I had to, for I saw we had to act quick even at the risk of losing a bit of the maximum figure we had counted on. You see I realized the danger to us in Larry Brainard suddenly showing up, and his knowing, as he told us he did, who the sucker is that we've been stringing along. Anything might happen, any minute, from Larry Brainard that would upset everything. So I reasoned that we had to collect quick or run the risk of never getting a nickel."

"Some bean you've got, Maggie," he said admiringly. "Keep your foot on the gas pedal."

"What I did was only, the carrying-out of the plan you had decided on--of course carrying it out quicker, and with a few little changes that the urgent situation demanded. After he proposed I broke down, as per schedule, and confessed that I had deceived him to the extent that I was already married. Married to a man I didn't love, and who didn't love me, but who was a tight-wad and who wouldn't let me go unless he saw a lot of money in it for him. And I gave Dick all the rest of the story, just as we had doped it out."

"Great work, Maggie! How did he take it?"

"Exactly as we figured he would. He was sorry for me; it didn't make any difference at all in his feelings for me. He'd buy my husband off--give him any price he wanted--and just so I wouldn't have to feel myself bound to such a man a minute longer than necessary he'd make a bargain with him at once and pay him part of the money right down. To-night, if he could get in touch with my husband. And so, Barney, since we had to act quick and there was no time to bring in another man that I could pass off as my husband, I confessed to him that I was married to you."

"To me!" exclaimed Barney.

"And he's coming here in less than an hour, with real money in his pockets, to see if he can't fix a deal with you."

"Me!" exclaimed the startled Barney again. His beady eyes glowed at her ardently. "Gee, you know I wish I really was married to you, Maggie! If I was, you bet money couldn't ever pry you loose from me!"

"Well, there's the whole lay-out, Barney. It's up to you to be my grasping, bargaining, unloving husband for about an hour."

"I hadn't thought of myself in that part," he objected. "I'd figured that we'd bring in a new man to be the husband. It's pretty dangerous for me, my stringing Dick along all this while and then suddenly to enter the act as your husband--and to take the money."

"Dangerous!" There was sudden contempt in her voice and in her eyes.

"So you're that kind of man, Barney--afraid! And afraid after my telling Dick you were my husband, and his swallowing the thing without a suspicion! Well, right this minute is when we call this deal off--and every other deal!"

"Oh, don't be so quick with that temper of yours, Maggie! I merely said it was dangerous. Of course I'll do it."

And then Barney asked, with a cunning he tried to hide: "But why did you ask me to have Old Jimmie show up here right after me? We don't need him."

"Just what's behind your saying that, Barney?" she demanded sharply.

He squirmed a little, then spoke the truth. "You don't love your father any too much, and he doesn't love you any too much--I know that. He needn't really know how much we take off Sherwood; if he wasn't here, he'd have to take our word for what we got and we'd tell him we got mighty little. Then the real money would be divided fifty-fifty between just you and me."

"I may not love my father, but he's in this on the same basis as you are, or I'm out of it," she declared. "I thought you might suggest something like this; that's one reason I asked you to have him come.