“Says she must see him. She’ll wait, she says, in the hallway till he comes out if she isn’t permitted to see him right away. She’ll wait, she says, if she has to wait all night. She talks like she means it. Talks like she would make trouble if put to it, Mr. Gegan.”
“Give a name?”
“Elsie Lane — that’s the young woman, ain’t it, that—”
“Shut up.”
Slim was troubled, as he had every reason to be. If Elsie saw Jack, she was bound to demand why he had never answered any of her letters. Jack might start an inquiry at the post office — serious predicaments might arise.
If Jack loved the girl he would be furious. She would hold the trump cards for winning him over. And, in his rage, he might turn on him, Slim, and — the girl must not be allowed to see Lawrence, must not. He must take swift and drastic measures.
“Go back and tell her that she’ll see Lawrence in a few minutes. Slip her into the little reception room. But don’t let her get out of it until I signal with the buzzer. Then bring her in here — into my room.”
“Yes, sir.”
Slim stepped back, closed the door and said:
“Pretty important matter come up. Fellow I’ve got to see right away. Madge, you take Jack into the music room and I’ll have Markey take you in some champagne. I guess you and Jack are ripe for a few more hours of talk, eh? I don’t expect this interview is going to take very long. I’ll join you soon as I can, Johnny-up, and we’ll talk over the future.”
“Yes, Slim. I’m anxious to do that with you. As I said, I’ve—”
“Well, hold it a little while, Johnny-up. Take him along, Madge.”
There were three doors in the room. The one at the front led into the main hallway. The door in the rear led to a private back stairway that dropped three flights before it admitted one into the main hallway of the apartment house below, where, if one desired, one might continue down four more rear flights to a rear door that opened on an alley along the side of the apartment house and running from the rear into the street.
The third door of Slim’s room opened into an interior hallway from which entrance was to be had to several bedrooms, a large music room and a still larger salon.
It was through this center door that Slim motioned Jack and Madge, and he watched them as they traversed its length and disappeared into the music room. He reentered his library, locked the center door, went to his big mahogany table, and touched a button beneath its top.
Very shortly thereafter Markey ushered Elsie Lane before him, and discreetly closed the door.
Miss Lane gazed coolly at the little, gray, ferret-faced master crook.
“I asked to see Mr. John Lawrence,” she said.
“What if Mr. Lawrence doesn’t care to see you, miss?”
“When he tells me so himself I’ll believe it.”
“Only that way, hey?”
“Only that way. May I ask who you are?”
“They told you my name downstairs, didn’t they, when you asked where Mr. Lawrence had gone?”
“They called you Mr. Allen.”
“That’s who I am.”
“Here, perhaps; Slim Gegan elsewhere, I fancy.”
“Oh, you do?”
“I’m certain of it. But I didn’t come here to see you, but to see Jack Lawrence.”
“And I’ve kind of hinted that perhaps he doesn’t want to see you.”
“I’ve said I would only believe that when he told me so himself.”
Slim relighted the cigar, which had gone out.
“No,” he said. “Lawrence wouldn’t have to tell you, if you knew what I knew.”
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Elsie.
“You’re in love with him, ain’t you?”
She blushed furiously and made him no answer.
“And you think he’s still in love with you? Because he told you he was the day before he was sent away.”
“He proved that he was by what he did to clear me,” said Elsie hotly.
“But three years in prison make big changes in a man. Besides you’ve grown famous. And you went too far away. There’s been another girl seeing him all this time — visiting him up in prison — as his sister. He saw her, talked to her, touched her hand, while he saw nothing of you, got only letters from you that read like Sunday school tracts.”
“What do you know of my letters?” asked Elsie.
“Oh, I saw him now and then. He told me.”
“Still I demand an opportunity here and now to see Jack Lawrence.”
Slim arose.
“All right. That goes. You’ll get a chance to see him. And then if you want to speak to him — if after you’ve seen, it turns out that your pride is so small, so contemptible — why, I’ve got nothing against you, Miss Lane, I’m only trying to make it easy for you.
“I’m only trying to let you know that whatever you may have been to Lawrence, whatever he may have thought of you once... well, he never gives you a thought now. It’s all right — all right. You are going to see him — mighty quick. After that it will be up to you.”
“I don’t understand what you are driving at.”
“You just wait here a second and you will... you will. You just wait a second. I’ll be right back.”
Slim unlocked the center door, opened it and passed out of the room. He moved hastily to the music salon. There he drew back a heavy velvet curtain and looked in on Jack and Madge as they sat chatting, champagne glasses in hand.
“Just a minute, Madge — just a word with you.”
She joined Slim in the hallway. He whispered to her swiftly. She gave him a nod of understanding and returned to the music room as Slim stepped briskly back along the hallway to his library.
He paused outside the door and listened until he heard the sound of a dance record as uttered by a gramophone from the music room. A small twist of a smile crossed his lips as he opened the library door and said:
“Suppose you come this way, Miss Lane.”
Chapter XXXIII
“The Law Couldn’t Get You, But I Can!”
Slim Gegan paused at the curtain shutting off the view of the interior of the music room. Then he drew it slightly aside and was satisfied. His whispered instructions to Madge had been that she start the gramophone in the tune of a dance.
This would place her in Jack’s arms. She was to watch the curtain, and when he opened it slightly it would be her cue to be suddenly overcome with such an emotion of love for Jack that she was to wind her arms tightly around his neck and, willy nilly, press her lips to his own.
As Slim moved the curtain slightly aside and peeked in Madge was looking at him over Jack’s shoulder. She winked to say that she had caught the cue.
Slim opened the curtain slightly wider.
“Suppose, Miss Lane, you look in without yourself being seen.”
Before she realized that she was spying, Elsie had done so. While the gay music rippled off the phonograph she looked in on two figures that scarcely moved — Madge and Jack Lawrence, lips joined and in a full embrace.
Elsie recoiled from the spectacle. Her face became very white. She turned swiftly and fairly ran back to Slim’s library, the little, gray man at her heels.
Once again in the room, he said to her, trying to put a touch of kindliness in his voice:
“I guess that finished your wanting to see Jack Lawrence, doesn’t it?”
Elsie stared at Slim Gegan as if she didn’t see him.
He went on:
“I know who you are and what brought you here. You are Jack’s good angel, aren’t you? And you came to take him away from my influence — rescue him from the villain’s clutches. Well, my dear young woman, you are wasting your time.
“He wants the life. He wants kick, adventure, and quick money. He wants me as much — more, much more than I have any need of him. He wants her, and he’s got her. And, by the same token, you can see how much he wants you — how warm a welcome you could expect if you came preaching to him. Especially right now after three years of unnatural restraint.”