I was working outside, overheard what was happening, and crept up on the porch.  Officer Gavegan, who was in charge, found a painting among Larry Brainard’s things.  Miss Sherwood said that it was a picture of Miss Maggie Cameron who had been visiting there, and I could see that it was.  Officer Gavegan said it was a picture of Maggie Carlisle, daughter of Jimmie Carlisle, and that she was a crook.  Larry Brainard, cornered, had to admit that Gavegan was right.  I guessed at once who Maggie Carlisle was, since she was just the age my girl would have been and since you never had any children.  And that’s how, Jimmie Carlisle, standing there outside the window,” concluded the terrible voice of Joe Ellison, “I learned for the first time that the baby I’d trusted with you to be brought up straight, and that I believed was now happy somewhere as a nice, decent girl, you had really brought up as your own daughter and trained to be a crook!”

Old Jimmie shrank back from Joe’s blazing eyes; his mouth opened spasmodically, but no words came therefrom.  There was stupendous silence in the room.  Within the closet, Larry now understood that low, strange sound he had heard on the Sherwoods’ porch and which Gavegan and Hunt had investigated.  It had been the suppressed cry of Joe Ellison when he had learned the truth—­the difference between his dreams and the reality.  He could not imagine what that moment had been to Joe:  the swift, unbelievable knowledge that had seemed to be tearing his very being apart.

Larry had an impulse to step out to Joe’s side.  But just as a little earlier he had felt the scene had belonged to Maggie, he now felt that this situation, the greatest in Joe’s life, belonged definitely to Joe, was almost sacredly Joe’s own property.  Also he felt that he was about to learn many things which had puzzled him.  Therefore he held himself back, at the same time keeping his hold upon Red Hannigan.

During this moment of silence, while Larry was wondering what was going to happen, his eyes also took in the figure of Maggie, all her powers of action and expression still paralyzed by appalling consternation.  He understood, at least to a degree, what she was going through.  He knew this much of her plan:  that she had intended to cut loose in some way from Barney and Old Jimmie, and that she had intended that her father should continue to cherish the dream that had been his happiness for so long.  And now her father had come upon her in the company of Barney and Old Jimmie and in a situation whose every superficial circumstance was such as to make him believe the worst of her!

Joe turned on the smartly dressed Barney.  “I’ll take you first, you imitation swell, because I’m saving Jimmie Carlisle to the last!” went on Joe’s crunching voice.  “I’m going to twist your damned neck for what you’ve helped do to my girl, but if you want to say anything first, say it.”

Barney’s response was a swift movement of his right hand toward his left armpit.  But Barney Palmer, like almost all his kind, was a very indifferent gunman; and he had no knowledge of the reputation for masterful quickness that had been Joe Ellison’s twenty years earlier.  Before his compact automatic was fairly out of its holster beneath his armpit, it was in Joe Ellison’s hands.