They've all had a rotten
finish, or are headed for one. So forget it, Maggie. There's more in
the straight game."
She had swiftly come to feel herself stronger and wiser than her ex-
hero. In her tremendous pride and confidence of eighteen, she regarded
him almost with pitying condescension.
"Something's softened your brain, Larry. I know better. The people who
pretend to go straight are just fakes; they're playing a different
kind of a smooth game, that's all. Everybody is out to get his, and
get it the easiest and quickest way he can. You know that's so. And
that's just what I am going to do."
Larry had once talked much the same way, but it seemed puzzlingly
strange just now to hear such talk from a young girl. Then he
understood.
"You couldn't help having such ideas, Maggie, living among crooks ever
since you were a kid. Why, Old Jimmie could not have used better
methods, or got better results, if he had set out consciously to make
you a crook." Then a sudden possibility came to him. "D'you suppose he
could always have had that plan--to make you into a crook?" he asked.
"What difference does that make?" she demanded shortly.
"A funny thing for a father to do with his own child," Larry returned.
"But whether Jimmie intended it or not, that's just what he's done.
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