She did not wait for a response, but stood up.  Her voice which had been shot through with emotion these last few minutes was now that flat, mechanical monotone to which the habitants of her little street were accustomed.

“I must be getting back to the city.  Good-night.”

He started to accompany her to her car, but she forbade him, saying that it would not help matters to have him seen and possibly recognized by the taxicab driver; and so she went out of the grounds alone.  Within another hour and a half she was set down unobserved in a dim side street in Brooklyn.  Thence she made her way on foot to the Subway and rode home.  If the police had noticed her absence and should question her, she could refuse to answer, or say that she had been visiting late with a friend in Brooklyn.

Larry sat long out in the night after his grandmother had left him.  What should he do with this amazing information placed at his disposal?  Tell Joe Ellison?  Or tell Maggie?  Or tell both?  Or himself try to meet Jimmie Carlisle and pay that traitor to Joe Ellison and that malformer of Maggie the coin he had earned?

But for hours the situation itself was still too bewildering in its many phases for Larry to give concentrated thought to what should be its attempted solution.  Not until dawn was beginning to awaken dully, as with a protracted yawn, out of the shadowy Sound, was he able really to hold his mind with clearness upon the problem of what use he should make of these facts of which he had been appointed guardian.  He decided against telling Joe Ellison—­at least he would not tell him yet.  He recalled the rumors of Joe Ellison’s repressed volcano of a temper; if Joe Ellison should learn how he had been defrauded, all the man’s vital forces would be instantly transformed into destructive, vengeful rage that would spare no one and count no cost.  The result would doubtless be tragedy, with no one greatly served, and with Joe very likely back in prison.  If he himself should go out to give Old Jimmie his deserts, his action would be just good powder wasted—­it likewise would serve no constructive purpose.  Larry realized that it is only human nature for a wronged man to wish for and attempt revenge; but that in the economy of life revenge has no value, serves no purpose; that it usually only makes a bad situation worse.

A tremendous wrong had been done here, a wrong which showed a malignant, cunning, patient mind.  But as Larry finally saw the matter, the point for first consideration was not the valueless satisfaction of making the guilty man suffer, but was to try to restore to the victims some part of those precious things of which they had been unconsciously robbed.