At the entrance of Joe Ellison instead of the expected Dick, Barney and Old Jimmie had sprung up from the table in amazement. Joe strode past Maggie, hardly heeding his daughter, and faced the two men.

“I guess you know me, Jimmie Carlisle!” said Joe with a terrifying restraint of tone. “The pal I trusted—the pal I turned everything over to—the pal who double-crossed me in every way!”

“Joe Ellison!” gasped Jimmie, suddenly as ghastly as a dead man. “I—I didn't know you were out.”

“I'm out, all right. But I'll probably go in again for what I'm going to do to you! And you there”—turning on Barney—“you're got up enough like a professional dancer to be the Barney Palmer I've heard of!”

“What business is it of yours who I am?” Barney tried to bluster. “Perhaps you won't mind introducing yourself.”

“I'm the man who's going to settle with you and Old Jimmie Carlisle! Is that introduction enough. If not, then I'm Joe Ellison, the father of this girl here you call Maggie Carlisle and Maggie Cameron, that you two have made into a crook.”

“Your daughter!” exclaimed Barney in stupefaction. “Why, she's Jimmie Carlisle's—”

“He's always passed her off as such; that much I've learned. Speak up, Jimmie Carlisle! Whose daughter is this girl you've turned into a crook?”

“Your daughter, Joe,” stammered Old Jimmie. “But about my making her into a crook—you're—you're all wrong there.”

“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. At the end of this afternoon some officers came to the Sherwoods' and arrested Larry Brainard. I was working outside, overheard what was happening, and crept up on the porch. Officer Gavegan, who was in charge, found a painting among Larry Brainard's things. Miss Sherwood said that it was a picture of Miss Maggie Cameron who had been visiting there, and I could see that it was. Officer Gavegan said it was a picture of Maggie Carlisle, daughter of Jimmie Carlisle, and that she was a crook. Larry Brainard, cornered, had to admit that Gavegan was right. I guessed at once who Maggie Carlisle was, since she was just the age my girl would have been and since you never had any children. And that's how, Jimmie Carlisle, standing there outside the window,” concluded the terrible voice of Joe Ellison, “I learned for the first time that the baby I'd trusted with you to be brought up straight, and that I believed was now happy somewhere as a nice, decent girl, you had really brought up as your own daughter and trained to be a crook!”

Old Jimmie shrank back from Joe's blazing eyes; his mouth opened spasmodically, but no words came therefrom. There was stupendous silence in the room. Within the closet, Larry now understood that low, strange sound he had heard on the Sherwoods' porch and which Gavegan and Hunt had investigated. It had been the suppressed cry of Joe Ellison when he had learned the truth—the difference between his dreams and the reality. He could not imagine what that moment had been to Joe: the swift, unbelievable knowledge that had seemed to be tearing his very being apart.

Larry had an impulse to step out to Joe's side. But just as a little earlier he had felt the scene had belonged to Maggie, he now felt that this situation, the greatest in Joe's life, belonged definitely to Joe, was almost sacredly Joe's own property. Also he felt that he was about to learn many things which had puzzled him. Therefore he held himself back, at the same time keeping his hold upon Red Hannigan.

During this moment of silence, while Larry was wondering what was going to happen, his eyes also took in the figure of Maggie, all her powers of action and expression still paralyzed by appalling consternation. He understood, at least to a degree, what she was going through. He knew this much of her plan: that she had intended to cut loose in some way from Barney and Old Jimmie, and that she had intended that her father should continue to cherish the dream that had been his happiness for so long. And now her father had come upon her in the company of Barney and Old Jimmie and in a situation whose every superficial circumstance was such as to make him believe the worst of her!

Joe turned on the smartly dressed Barney. “I'll take you first, you imitation swell, because I'm saving Jimmie Carlisle to the last!” went on Joe's crunching voice. “I'm going to twist your damned neck for what you've helped do to my girl, but if you want to say anything first, say it.”

Barney's response was a swift movement of his right hand toward his left armpit. But Barney Palmer, like almost all his kind, was a very indifferent gunman; and he had no knowledge of the reputation for masterful quickness that had been Joe Ellison's twenty years earlier. Before his compact automatic was fairly out of its holster beneath his armpit, it was in Joe Ellison's hands.

“I sized you up for that kind of rat and was watching you,” continued Joe in his same awful grimness. “I'm not going to shoot you, unless you make me. I'm going to twist that pretty neck of yours. But first, out with anything you've got to say for yourself!”

“I haven't had anything to do with this business,” said Barney, trying to affect a bold manner.

“You lie! I know that in this game against Dick Sherwood, in which you used my girl, you were the real leader!”

“Well—even if I did use your girl, I only used her the way I found her.”

“You lie again! I know how your kind work: cleverly putting crooked ideas into girls' minds, and exciting their imagination, so they'll work with you. Your case is closed.” He turned to his one-time friend. “What have you got to say for yourself, Jimmie Carlisle?”

Old Jimmie believed that his last hour was come. He showed something of the defiant, almost maniacal courage of a coward who realizes he can retreat no farther.

“What I got to say, Joe Ellison,” he snarled in a sudden rage which bared his yellow teeth, “is that I'm even with you at last!”

“Even with me? What for?”

“For the way you double-crossed me in nineteen-one in that Gordon business. You never gave me a dime—said the thing had fallen down—yet I know there was a big haul!”

“I told you the truth. That Gordon thing was a fizzle.”

“There's where you're lying! It was a clean-up! And I knew you'd been cheating me out of my share in other deals!”

“You're absolutely wrong, Jimmie Carlisle. But if you thought that, why didn't you have it out with me at the time?”

“Because I knew you would lie! You were a better talker than I was, and since our outfit always sided with you, I knew I wouldn't have a chance then. But I reasoned that if I kept quiet and kept on being your friend, I'd get my chance to get even if I waited awhile. I waited—and I certainly got my chance!”

“Go on, Jimmie Carlisle!”

And Old Jimmie went on—a startlingly different Old Jimmie, his pent-up evil now loosed into quivering, malignant triumph; went on with the feverish exultation of a twisted, perverted mind that has brooded long over an imagined injustice, that has brooded greedily and long in private over his revenge, and at last has his chance to gloat in the open.

“When you were sent away, Joe Ellison, and turned over your daughter to me with those orders about seeing that she was brought up as a decent girl, I began to see the big chance I'd been waiting for. I asked myself, What is the dearest thing in the world to Joe Ellison? The answer was, this idea he'd got about his girl. I asked myself, What is the biggest way I can get even with Joe Ellison? The answer was, to make Joe Ellison believe all the time he's in stir that his girl is growing up the way he wants her to be and yet to bring her up the exact thing he didn't want her to be. And that's exactly what I did!”

“You—did—such a thing?” breathed Joe Ellison, almost incredulous.

“That's exactly what I did!” Old Jimmie went on, gloatingly. “It was easy. No one knew you had a daughter, so I passed her off as my own baby by a marriage I'd not told any one about. I saw that she always lived among crooks, looked at things the way crooks do, and grew up with no other thought than to be a crook. I never had an idea of using her myself, till she began to look like such a good performer this last year; and then my idea, no matter what Barney Palmer may have planned, was to use her only in a couple of stunts. My main idea always was, when you came out with your grand idea of what your girl had grown up to be, for you suddenly to see your girl, and know her as your girl, and know her to be a crook. That smash to you was the big thing to me—what I'd planned for, and waited for. I didn't expect the blow-off to come like this; I didn't expect to be caught in it when it did happen. But since it has happened, well—There's your daughter, Joe Ellison! Look at her! Look at what I've made her! I guess I'm even all right!”

“My God!” breathed Joe Ellison, staring at the lean face twisting with triumphant malignancy. “I didn't think there could be such a man!”

He slowly turned upon Maggie. This was the first direct recognition he had taken of her since his entrance.

“I don't suppose you can guess what your being what you are has meant to me,” he began in a numbed tone which grew accusingly harsh as he continued. “But I'd think that a daughter of mine, with such a mother, would have had more instinctive sense than to have gone into such a game with such a pair of crooks!”

“It's true—I have been what you think me—I did go into this thing against Dick Sherwood,” Maggie responded in a voice that at first was faltering, then that stumbled rapidly on in her eagerness to pour out all the facts. “But—but Larry Brainard had kept after me—and finally he made me see how wrong I was headed. And then, this afternoon, before I spoke to you, Larry told me that you were my real father. When I learned the truth—how I had been cheated out of being something else—how I was the exact opposite of what you had wanted me to be and believed me to be—I felt about it almost exactly as you feel about it. I—I made up my mind to clear up at once all the wrong I was responsible for—and then disappear in such a way that you'd never have your dream of me spoiled. And so—and so this afternoon, after I left Cedar Crest, I confessed the whole truth to Dick Sherwood—about our plan to cheat him. And like the really splendid fellow he is, Dick Sherwood offered to help me set straight the things I wanted to set straight. Particularly to clear Larry Brainard. And so my being here as you find me is part of a plan between Dick Sherwood and myself. It's really a frame-up. A frame-up to catch Barney Palmer and Jimmie Carlisle.”

“A frame-up!” ejaculated these two in startled unison.

“How a frame-up?” demanded her father, no bit of the accusing harshness gone out of his voice.

“Our plan against Dick Sherwood was to have him propose to me, then for me to confess that I was really married to a mean sort of man I didn't love—the idea being that Dick would be infatuated enough to pay a big sum to a dummy husband, and the three of us would disappear as soon as we got Dick's money. Dick offered to go through with the plan as Barney Palmer and Jimmie Carlisle had shaped it up—go through with it to-night—and then after money had passed, we'd have a criminal case against them. By reminding him that Larry Brainard knew just what we were up to, and might spoil everything if we didn't act at once, I got Barney Palmer worked up to the point where he was going to pose as my husband and take the money. Dick Sherwood was to come a little later, after he'd first telephoned me, with a big roll of marked money.”

There were stuttered exclamations from Barney and Old Jimmie, which were cut off by the dominant incisiveness of Joe Ellison's words to his daughter:

“I think you're lying to me! Besides, even if you're telling the truth, it's a pretty way you've taken to clear things up! Don't you see that by letting Dick Sherwood come here and play such a part, you'd be dead sure to involve him and his family in a dirty police story that the papers of the whole country would play up as a sensation? It's plain to any one that that's no way a person who wanted to square things would use Dick Sherwood. And that's why I think you're lying!”

“I had thought of that—you're right,” said Maggie. “And so I wasn't going to do it. He was going to telephone me—just about this time—and when he called up I was going to fake his message. I was going to tell Barney Palmer and Old Jimmie that Dick had just telephoned he wasn't coming, because one of the two had just sold him a tip for ten thousand dollars that this was a crooked game. I thought this would have started a quarrel between the two; they are suspicious of each other, anyhow. Each would have accused the other, and in their quarrel they would have been likely to have let out a lot of truth that would have completely given each other away.”

“Not a bad plan at all,” commented Joe Ellison. He tried to peer deep into his daughter for a moment, his inflamed face relaxing neither in its harshness nor its doubt of her. “But since you are the clever crook I actually know you to be from your work on Dick Sherwood, and since Jimmie Carlisle says he has trained you to be a crook, I believe that everything you've told me is just something you've cleverly invented on the spur of the moment—just so many lies.”

“But—but—”

She broke off before the harsh, accusing doubt of his pale face. For a fraction of a moment no one spoke. Then the telephone bell began to ring.

“Dick!” breathed Maggie, and started for the telephone.

“Stay right where you are!” her father ordered. “I'll answer that telephone myself, and see whether you're lying to me about Dick Sherwood!... No, we'll do this together. I'll hold the receiver and hear what he says. You'll do the talking and you'll answer just what I tell you to, and you'll keep your hand tight over the mouthpiece while I'm giving you your orders. You two”—to Barney and Old Jimmie, with a significant movement of Barney's automatic—“you'd better behave while this telephone business is going on.”

The next moment Larry was hearing, or rather witnessing, the strangest telephone conversation of his experience. Maggie was holding the transmitter, and Joe had the receiver at his ears, grimly covering the two men with the automatic. Maggie obediently kept her palm tight over the mouthpiece during Joe's brief whispered directions, and no one in the room except Joe, not even Maggie, had the slightest idea of what was really passing over the wires.

What Larry heard was no more than a dozen most commonplace words in the world, transformed into the most absorbing words in the language. Joe ordered Maggie to answer with “hello” in her usual tone, which she did, and Joe, after a startled expression at the first words that came over the wire, listened with immobile face for four or five seconds. Then he nodded imperatively to Maggie and she put her hand over the mouthpiece.

“Ask him how much, and when he wanted it to be paid,” he ordered.

“How much, and when does he want it to be paid?” repeated Maggie.

Again Joe listened for several moments; and then ordered as before: “Say 'Yes.'”

“Yes,” said Maggie.

Another period of waiting, and Joe ordered: “Say, 'I've got a much better plan that supersedes the old.'”

“I've got a much better plan that supersedes the old.”

There was yet another period of waiting, then Joe commanded: “Tell him he really mustn't and say good-bye quick.”

“You really mustn't! Good-bye!”

The instant her “Good-bye” was out of her mouth Joe clicked the receiver upon its hook, and stood regarding the breathless Maggie. His pale, stern face was not quite so severe as before. Presently he spoke: “I know now that you really were sick of what you'd been trying to do—that you'd really broken away from these two—that you'd really confessed to Dick, and are now all square with him.”

The word “Father!” struggled chokingly toward her lips. But she only said:

“I'm glad—you know.”

“And you were shrewd in that guess you made of what one of these two would do.” Joe crossed back to Barney and Old Jimmie. “You two must have been almighty afraid, because of Larry Brainard, that your game was suddenly collapsing, and each must have been trying to grab a piece for himself before he ran away.”

“What you talking about?” gruffly demanded Barney.

“Perhaps I'm talking about you. But more particularly about Jimmie Carlisle. For just now Dick Sherwood said when he telephoned, that an hour or two ago Jimmie Carlisle had hunted him up, had hinted that he was going to lose a lot of money unless he was properly advised, and offered to give him certain valuable information for five thousand cash.”

Barney turned upon his partner. “You damned thief!” he snarled, tensed as if about to spring upon the other.

Old Jimmie, turned greenishly pale, shrank away from Barney, his every expression proclaiming his guilt. Then Maggie again found her voice:

“And at about the same time Barney was trying to double-cross Jimmie Carlisle, Barney proposed to me that, after we'd got Dick Sherwood's money, we'd tell Jimmie Carlisle we'd got very little, and divide the real money fifty-fifty between just us two.”

“You damned thief!” snarled Old Jimmie back at his partner.

The next moment Barney and Old Jimmie were upon each other, striking wildly, clawing. But the moment after Joe Ellison, his repressed rage now unloosed, and with the super-strength of his supreme fury, had torn the two apart.

“You don't do that to each other—that job belongs to me!” he cried. His right arm flung Barney backward so that Barney went staggering over himself and sprawled upon the floor. Joe gripped Old Jimmie's collar, and his right hand painfully twisted Jimmie's arm. “And I finish you off first, Jimmie Carlisle, for what you've done to me and my girl! But for Larry Brainard you, Jimmie Carlisle, would have succeeded in your scheme to make my girl a crook! I'd like to give you a thousand years of agony, you damned rat—but that's beyond me!” His right hand shifted swiftly from Old Jimmie's arm to his throat. “But I'm going to choke your rat's life out of you!—your lying, sneaking devil's life out of you!”

Old Jimmie squirmed and twisted with those long fingers clamped mercilessly around his throat, his eyes rolling, and his mouth gaping with voiceless cries. He was indeed being shaken as a rat might be shaken.

“Don't!—Don't!” cried the frantic Maggie, and started to seize her father to pull him away. But she was halted by her arm being caught by Barney.

“Let Jimmie have it!” he said fiercely to her, and flung her to the farthest corner of the room. And grimly exultant over what seemed to be Old Jimmie's doom, he started for the door to make his own escape.

Up to the moment of Joe Ellison's eruption Larry had felt bound to remain a mere spectator where he was: long as the time had seemed to him, it had in fact been less than half an hour. He had felt bound at first by his promise to Maggie to let her work out her plan; and bound later by his sense that this situation belonged to Joe Ellison. But now this swift crisis dissolved all such obligations. He sprang from his closet to take his part in the drama that was so swiftly unfolding.