"
"So she's not a crook, and you didn't make her one?" demanded Joe with
the calm of unexploded dynamite whose fuse is sputtering. "I left you
about twelve or fifteen hundred a year to bring her up on--as a
decent, respectable girl. That's twenty-five or thirty a week. If
she's not a crook, how can she on twenty-five a week have all the
swell clothes I've seen her in, and be living in a suite like this
that costs from twenty-five to fifty a day? And if she isn't a crook,
why is she mixed up with two such crooks as you? And if she isn't a
crook, why is she in a game to trim young Dick Sherwood?"
The two men started and wilted at these driving questions. "But--but,
Joe," stammered Old Jimmie, "you've gone out of your head. She's not
in any such game. She never even heard of any Dick Sherwood."
"Cut out your lies, Jimmie Carlisle!" Joe ordered harshly. "We've got
something more to do here, the four of us, than to waste any time on
lies. And just to prove to you that your lies will be wasted, I'll lay
all my cards face up on the table. Since I got out I've been working
for the Sherwoods. Larry Brainard was working there before me, and got
me my job. I've seen this girl here--my daughter that you've made into
a crook--out there twice. Dick Sherwood was supposed to be in love
with her.
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