Children of the Whirlwind [113]
state of mind, this play which she was staging would have seemed the crudest, most impossible melodrama--a thing both too absurd and too dangerous for her to risk. But Maggie was just then living through one of the highest periods of her life; she cared little what happened to her. And it is just such moods that transform and elevate what otherwise would be absurd to the nobly serious; that changes the impossible into the possible; just as an exalted mood or mind is, or was, the primary difference between Hamlet, or Macbeth, or Lear, and any of the forgotten Bowery melodramas of a generation now gone.
She had been dressed for perhaps ten nervous minutes when the bell rang. She admitted a slight, erect, well-dressed, middle-aged man with a lean, thin-lipped face and a cold, hard, conservative eye: a man of the type that you see by the dozens in the better hotels of New York, and seeing them you think, if you think of them at all, that here is the canny president of some fair-sized bank who will not let a client borrow a dollar beyond his established credit, or that here is the shrewd but unobtrusive power behind some great industry of the Middle West.
"I'm Hannigan," he announced briefly. "I know you're Old Jimmie Carlisle's girl. The Duchess told me you wanted me on something big. What's the idea?"
"You want to get Larry Brainard, don't you?--or whoever it was that squealed on you?"
There was a momentary gleam in the hard, gray eyes. "I do."
"That's why you're here. In a little over an hour, if you stay quiet in the background, you'll have what you want."
"You've got a swell-looking lay-out here. What's going to be pulled off?"
"It's not what I might tell you that's going to help you. It's what you hear and see."
"All right," said the thin-lipped man. "I'll pass the questions, since the Duchess told me to do as you said. She's square, even if she does have a grandson who's a stool. I suppose I'm to be out of sight during whatever happens?"
"Yes."
In the room there were two spacious closets, as is not infrequent in the better class of modern hotels; and it had been these two closets which had been the practical starting-point of Maggie's development of Dick Sherwood's proposition. To one of these she led Hannigan.
"You'll be out of sight here, and you'll get every word."
He stepped inside, and she closed the door. Also she took the precaution of locking it. She wished Hannigan to hear, but she wished no such contretemps as Hannigan bursting forth and spoiling her play when it had reached only the middle of its necessary action.
Barlow came promptly at half-past eight. He brought news which for a few moments almost completely upset Maggie's delicately balanced structure.
"I know who you are now," he said brusquely. "And part of your game's cold before you start."
"Why?--What part?"
"Just after you left Headquarters Officer Gavegan showed up. He had this Larry Brainard in tow--had pinched him out on Long Island."
This announcement staggered Maggie; for the moment made all her strenuous planning seem to have lost its purpose. In her normal condition she might either have given up or betrayed her real intent. But just now, in her super-excited state, in which she felt she was fighting desperately for others, she was acting far above her ordinary capacity; and she was making decisions so swift that they hardly seemed to proceed from conscious thought. So Barlow, vigilant watcher of faces that he was, saw nothing unusual in her expression or manner.
"What did you do with him?" she asked.
"Left him with Gavegan--and with Casey, who had just come in. Trailing with Brainard was a swell named Hunt, cussing mad. He was snorting around about being pals with most of the magistrates, and swore he'd have Brainard out on bail inside an hour. But what he does don't make any difference to me. Your proposition seems to me dead cold, since I've already got Brainard, and got him right. I wouldn't have bothered to have come here at all except for something you let drop about the pals he
She had been dressed for perhaps ten nervous minutes when the bell rang. She admitted a slight, erect, well-dressed, middle-aged man with a lean, thin-lipped face and a cold, hard, conservative eye: a man of the type that you see by the dozens in the better hotels of New York, and seeing them you think, if you think of them at all, that here is the canny president of some fair-sized bank who will not let a client borrow a dollar beyond his established credit, or that here is the shrewd but unobtrusive power behind some great industry of the Middle West.
"I'm Hannigan," he announced briefly. "I know you're Old Jimmie Carlisle's girl. The Duchess told me you wanted me on something big. What's the idea?"
"You want to get Larry Brainard, don't you?--or whoever it was that squealed on you?"
There was a momentary gleam in the hard, gray eyes. "I do."
"That's why you're here. In a little over an hour, if you stay quiet in the background, you'll have what you want."
"You've got a swell-looking lay-out here. What's going to be pulled off?"
"It's not what I might tell you that's going to help you. It's what you hear and see."
"All right," said the thin-lipped man. "I'll pass the questions, since the Duchess told me to do as you said. She's square, even if she does have a grandson who's a stool. I suppose I'm to be out of sight during whatever happens?"
"Yes."
In the room there were two spacious closets, as is not infrequent in the better class of modern hotels; and it had been these two closets which had been the practical starting-point of Maggie's development of Dick Sherwood's proposition. To one of these she led Hannigan.
"You'll be out of sight here, and you'll get every word."
He stepped inside, and she closed the door. Also she took the precaution of locking it. She wished Hannigan to hear, but she wished no such contretemps as Hannigan bursting forth and spoiling her play when it had reached only the middle of its necessary action.
Barlow came promptly at half-past eight. He brought news which for a few moments almost completely upset Maggie's delicately balanced structure.
"I know who you are now," he said brusquely. "And part of your game's cold before you start."
"Why?--What part?"
"Just after you left Headquarters Officer Gavegan showed up. He had this Larry Brainard in tow--had pinched him out on Long Island."
This announcement staggered Maggie; for the moment made all her strenuous planning seem to have lost its purpose. In her normal condition she might either have given up or betrayed her real intent. But just now, in her super-excited state, in which she felt she was fighting desperately for others, she was acting far above her ordinary capacity; and she was making decisions so swift that they hardly seemed to proceed from conscious thought. So Barlow, vigilant watcher of faces that he was, saw nothing unusual in her expression or manner.
"What did you do with him?" she asked.
"Left him with Gavegan--and with Casey, who had just come in. Trailing with Brainard was a swell named Hunt, cussing mad. He was snorting around about being pals with most of the magistrates, and swore he'd have Brainard out on bail inside an hour. But what he does don't make any difference to me. Your proposition seems to me dead cold, since I've already got Brainard, and got him right. I wouldn't have bothered to have come here at all except for something you let drop about the pals he