why
it's safe for Barney to pull off anything he likes."

"Barney a police stool!" Larry repeated in the stupor of his amazement.

"Guess that's all the news I wanted to hand you, Larry, so I'll be on my
way. Here's wishing you luck--and for God's sake, don't let yourself be
pinched by us. So-long." And with that Casey slipped out of the hallway.

For a moment Larry stood moveless where Casey had left him. Then fierce
purpose, and a cautious recklessness, surged up and took mastery of him.
It had required what Casey had told him to end his irksome waiting and
wavering. No longer could he remain in his hiding-place, safe himself,
trying to save Maggie by slow, indirect endeavor. The time had now come
for very different methods. The time had come to step forth into the
open, taking, of course, no unnecessary risk, and to have it out face to
face with his enemies, who were also Maggie's real enemies, though she
counted them her friends--to save Maggie against her own will, if he
could save her in no other way.

And having so decided, Larry walked quickly out of the hallway into the
street.

CHAPTER XXVII

On the sidewalk Larry glanced swiftly around him. Half a block down the
street on the front of a drug-store was a blue telephone flag. A minute
later he was inside a telephone booth in the drug-store, asking first
for the Hotel Grantham, and then asking the Grantham operator to be
connected with Miss Maggie Cameron.

There was a long wait. While he listened for Maggie's voice he blazed
with terrible fury against Barney Paler. For Maggie to be connected with
a straight crook, that idea had been bad enough. But for her to be under
the influence of the worst crook of all, a stool, a cunning traitor to
his own friends--that was more than could possibly be stood! In his rage
in Maggie's behalf he forgot for the moment the many evils Barney had
done to himself. He thought of wild, incoherent, vaguely tremendous
plans. First he would get Maggie away from Barney and Old
Jimmie--somehow. Then he would square accounts with those two--again by
an undefined somehow.

Presently the tired, impersonal voice of the Grantham operator remarked
against his ear-drum: "Miss Cameron don't answer."

"Have her paged, please," he requested.

Larry, of course, could not know that his telephone call was the very
one which had rung in Maggie's room while Barney and Old Jimmie
were with her, and which Barney had harshly forbidden