第63章

"And I might as well tell you," he went on, "that since that night at the Grantham when I heard his voice, I've known that Dick is the sucker you and Barney and Old Jimmie are trying to trim."

She half rose, and her voice sounded sharply: "Then you've got me caught in a trap! You've told them about me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Not so loud, or we may attract attention," he warned her. "I haven't told because you had your chance to give me away to Barney that night at the Grantham. And you didn't give me away."

She sank slowly back to the bench. "Is that your only reason?"

"No," he answered truthfully. "Exposing you would merely mean that you'd feel harder toward me--and harder toward every one else. I don't want that."

She pondered this a moment. "Then--you're not going to tell?"

He shook his head. "I don't expect to. I want you to be free to decide what you're going to do--though I hope you'll decide not to go through with this thing you're doing."

She made no response. Larry had spoken with control until now, but his next words burst from him.

"Don't you see what a situation it's put me in, Maggie--trying to play square with my friends, the Sherwoods, and trying to play square with you?"

Again she did not answer.

"Maggie, you're too good for what you're doing--it's all a terrible mistake!" he cried passionately. Then he remembered himself, and spoke with more composure. "Oh, I know there's not much use in talking to you now--while you feel as you do about yourself--and while you feel as you do about me. But you know I love you, and want to marry you--when--" He halted.

"When?" she prompted, almost involuntarily.

"When you see things differently--and when I can go around the world a free man, not a fugitive from Barney and his gunmen and the police."

Again Maggie was silent for a moment. It was as if she were trying to press out of her mind what he had said about loving her. Truly this was, indeed, different from their previous meetings. Before, there had almost invariably been a defiant attitude, a dispute, a quarrel. Now she had no desire to quarrel.

Finally she said with an effort to be that self-controlled person which she had established as her model:

"You seem to have your chance here to put over what you boasted to me about. You remember making good in a straight way."

"Yes. And I shall make good--if only they will let me alone." He paused an instant. "But I have no illusions about the present," he went on quietly. "I'm in quiet water for a time; I've got a period of safety; and I'm using this chance to put in some hard work. But presently the police and Barney and the others will learn where I am.

Then I'll have all that fight over again--only the next time it'll be harder."

She was startled into a show of interest. "You think that's really going to happen?"

"It's bound to. There's no escaping it. If for no other reason, I myself won't be able to stand being penned up indefinitely. Something will happen, I don't know what, which will pull me out into the open world--and then for me the deluge!"

He made this prediction grimly. He was not a fatalist, but it had been borne in upon him recently that this thing was inescapable. As for him, when that time came, he was going to put up the best fight that was in him.

He caught the strained look which had come into Maggie's face, and it prompted him suddenly to lean toward her and say:

"Maggie, do you still think I'm a stool and a squealer?"

"I--"