CHAPTER XXXV

At the entrance of Joe Ellison instead of the expected Dick, Barney and Old Jimmie had sprung up from the table in amazement.  Joe strode past Maggie, hardly heeding his daughter, and faced the two men.

“I guess you know me, Jimmie Carlisle!” said Joe with a terrifying restraint of tone.  “The pal I trusted—­the pal I turned everything over to—­the pal who double-crossed me in every way!”

“Joe Ellison!” gasped Jimmie, suddenly as ghastly as a dead man.  “I—­I didn’t know you were out.”

“I’m out, all right.  But I’ll probably go in again for what I’m going to do to you!  And you there”—­turning on Barney—­“you’re got up enough like a professional dancer to be the Barney Palmer I’ve heard of!”

“What business is it of yours who I am?” Barney tried to bluster.  “Perhaps you won’t mind introducing yourself.”

“I’m the man who’s going to settle with you and Old Jimmie Carlisle!  Is that introduction enough.  If not, then I’m Joe Ellison, the father of this girl here you call Maggie Carlisle and Maggie Cameron, that you two have made into a crook.”

“Your daughter!” exclaimed Barney in stupefaction.  “Why, she’s Jimmie Carlisle’s—­”

“He’s always passed her off as such; that much I’ve learned.  Speak up, Jimmie Carlisle!  Whose daughter is this girl you’ve turned into a crook?”

“Your daughter, Joe,” stammered Old Jimmie.  “But about my making her into a crook—­you’re—­you’re all wrong there.”

“So she’s not a crook, and you didn’t make her one?” demanded Joe with the calm of unexploded dynamite whose fuse is sputtering.  “I left you about twelve or fifteen hundred a year to bring her up on—­as a decent, respectable girl.  That’s twenty-five or thirty a week.  If she’s not a crook, how can she on twenty-five a week have all the swell clothes I’ve seen her in, and be living in a suite like this that costs from twenty-five to fifty a day?  And if she isn’t a crook, why is she mixed up with two such crooks as you?  And if she isn’t a crook, why is she in a game to trim young Dick Sherwood?”

The two men started and wilted at these driving questions.  “But—­but, Joe,” stammered Old Jimmie, “you’ve gone out of your head.  She’s not in any such game.  She never even heard of any Dick Sherwood.”

“Cut out your lies, Jimmie Carlisle!” Joe ordered harshly.  “We’ve got something more to do here, the four of us, than to waste any time on lies.  And just to prove to you that your lies will be wasted, I’ll lay all my cards face up on the table.  Since I got out I’ve been working for the Sherwoods.  Larry Brainard was working there before me, and got me my job.  I’ve seen this girl here—­my daughter that you’ve made into a crook—­out there twice.  Dick Sherwood was supposed to be in love with her.  At the end of this afternoon some officers came to the Sherwoods’ and arrested Larry Brainard.