Father love, Larry."
"I see; that'll be your explanation." Larry's eyes grew keen at the
new understanding. "I hadn't thought of that before, Jimmie. So that's
why you've always boarded Maggie around in shady joints: so's you
could meet your pals and yet always have the excuse that you had come
to meet your daughter?"
"Partly that," smiled Old Jimmie blandly--perhaps too blandly.
"Suppose we sit down."
They did so, Maggie sitting a little apart from the men and regarding
Larry with indignant, questioning eyes. She still could not understand
his queer behavior when she had announced her intention of working
with him. Could it be, as her father had said, because he would never
work with women--not trusting them? She'd show him!
She was so occupied with this wonderment that she gave no heed to the
talk about Larry's experience in Sing Sing and Old Jimmie's recital of
what had happened among Larry's friends during his absence. During
this gossip the Duchess entered from the stairway, and without word to
any one shuffled across to her desk in a corner and bent silently over
her accounts: just one more grotesque and unredeemed pledge in this
museum of antiquities and forgotten pawns.
Presently Barney Palmer, who had been impatient during all this, broke
out with:
"Aw, let's cut out this chatter about what used to be and get down to
cases.
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