"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.
