"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.
