o-morrow. It's late, and you're wet and cold, and
besides, my aunt is having one of her bad spells and thinks she needs
me. Judkins will see to you. Good-night."

"Good-night," said Larry.

She moved gracefully out--almost floated, Larry would have said. The
next moment the man was with him who had been his escort here, and led
Larry into a spacious bedroom with bath attached. Ten minutes later
Judkins made his exit, carrying Larry's outer clothes; and another
ten minutes later, after a hot bath, and garbed in silk pajamas which
Judkins had produced, Larry was in the softest and freshest bed that had
ever held him.

But sleep did not come to Larry for a long time. He lay wondering about
this golden-haired, poiseful Miss Sherwood. She was undoubtedly the
woman in the back of Hunt's life. And he wondered about Hunt--who he
really was--what had really driven him into this strange exile. And he
wondered about Maggie--what she might be doing--what from this strange
new vantage-point he might do for her and with her. And he wondered how
his own complex situation was going to work itself out.

And still wondering, Larry at length fell asleep.

CHAPTER XII

When Larry awoke the next morning, he blinked for several bewildered
moments about his bedroom, so unlike his cell at Sing Sing and so unlike
Hunt's helter-skelter studio down at the Duchess's which he had shared,
before he realized that this big, airy chamber and this miracle of a bed
on which he lay were realities and not a mere continuation of a dream of
fantastic and body-flattering wealth.

Then his mind turned back a page in the book of his life and he lay
considering the events of the previous evening: the scene with Barney
and Old Jimmie and Maggie, their all denouncing him as a police
stool-pigeon and a squealer, and Maggie's defiant departure to begin her
long-dreamed-of career as a leading-woman and perhaps star in what she
saw as great and thrilling adventures; his own enforced and frenzied
flight; his strange method of reaching this splendid apartment; his
meeting with the handsome, drink-befuddled young man in evening clothes;
his meeting with the exquisitely gowned patrician Miss Sherwood, who
had received him with the poise and frank friendliness of a democratic
queen, and had immediately ordered him off to bed.

Strange, all of these things! But they were all realities. And in this
new set of circumstances which had come into being in a nigh