But you
and I are evidently here for the same purpose: to get next to something
that's going to happen out in the room. What do you say, Red?--let's
suspend hostilities for the present. You've got me where you can follow
me, and you can get me any time."

"You bet I'll get you!" declared Hannigan. And then after a few more
words an armistice was agreed upon between the two men in the closet
and silently, tensely, they stood in the dark awaiting whatever was to
happen.

Outside Maggie, that amateur playwright who had tried so desperately to
prearrange events, that inexperienced goddess from the machine, stood in
a panic of fear and suspense the like of which she had never known.

CHAPTER XXXIV

But when Barney's latch-key slid into the door and Barney, in a smart
dinner jacket, came in, Maggie was herself again. Indeed she was better
than herself, for there rushed to her support that added power which she
had just been despairing of, which carries some people through an hour
of crisis, and which may occasionally lift an actor above himself when
fortune gives him a difficult yet splendid part which is the great
chance of his career.

And Maggie showed to the eye that she was better than her best, for
Barney exclaimed the instant he was beside her: "Gee, Maggie, you look
like the Queen of Sheba, whoever that dame was! Any guy would fall for
you to-night--and fall so hard that he'd break, or go broke!"

But Barney was too eager to await any response. "What's behind the
hurry-up call you sent in? Anything broken yet?"

"Something big! But sit down. There's a lot to tell. And I must tell it
quick--before my"--she could not force herself to say "father"--"before
Old Jimmie comes, and Dick."

"Then Dick's coming?"

"Yes. Things have taken a twist so that everything breaks to-night. But
sit down, and I'll tell you everything."

She had noted that the door behind which Larry stood, and to which
he had captured the key, was open a bare half-inch. It looked no more
suspicious than any closet door that by accident had swung free of its
latch, but by deft maneuvering Maggie managed so that Barney sat at the
table with his back toward both closets.

"Go to it, Maggie," he urged.

The plan which had swiftly developed from Dick Sherwood's idea required
that she should tell much that was the truth and much that was not
truth, and required that she should play with every faculty and every
attraction she possessed u