shook hands with his partners
of other days.

"Gee, Larry, it's good to see you!" exclaimed the cunning-eyed old man.
"Didn't know you were back till I bumped into Gavegan on Broadway. He
told me, and so Barney and I beat it over here to see you. Believe me,
Larry, that flatfoot is certainly sore at you!"

Larry ignored the last sentence. "Think it exactly wise for you two to
come here?"

"Why, Larry?"

"Gavegan, Casey, the police, may follow, thinking you've come to see me
for some purpose. That outfit may act upon suspicion."

Jimmie grinned cunningly. "A man can come to visit his own daughter as
often as he likes. Father love, Larry."

"I see; that'll be your explanation." Larry's eyes grew keen at the new
understanding. "I hadn't thought of that before, Jimmie. So that's why
you've always boarded Maggie around in shady joints: so's you could meet
your pals and yet always have the excuse that you had come to meet your
daughter?"

"Partly that," smiled Old Jimmie blandly--perhaps too blandly. "Suppose
we sit down."

They did so, Maggie sitting a little apart from the men and regarding
Larry with indignant, questioning eyes. She still could not understand
his queer behavior when she had announced her intention of working with
him. Could it be, as her father had said, because he would never work
with women--not trusting them? She'd show him!

She was so occupied with this wonderment that she gave no heed to the
talk about Larry's experience in Sing Sing and Old Jimmie's recital of
what had happened among Larry's friends during his absence. During this
gossip the Duchess entered from the stairway, and without word to any
one shuffled across to her desk in a corner and bent silently over her
accounts: just one more grotesque and unredeemed pledge in this museum
of antiquities and forgotten pawns.

Presently Barney Palmer, who had been impatient during all this, broke
out with:

"Aw, let's cut out this chatter about what used to be and get down to
cases. Jimmie, will you spill the business to Larry, or want me to?"

"I'll tell him. Listen, Larry." Maggie pricked up her ears; the talk was
now excitingly important. "We've got our very greatest game all planned
out. Stock-selling game; going to unload the whole thing on one sucker,
and we've got the sucker picked out. Besides you and Barney and me,
there's Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt in it--a classy bunch all
right. And we think that for the woman end we'