“Dick!” breathed Maggie, and started for the telephone.

“Stay right where you are!” her father ordered.  “I’ll answer that telephone myself, and see whether you’re lying to me about Dick Sherwood! . . .  No, we’ll do this together.  I’ll hold the receiver and hear what he says.  You’ll do the talking and you’ll answer just what I tell you to, and you’ll keep your hand tight over the mouthpiece while I’m giving you your orders.  You two”—­to Barney and Old Jimmie, with a significant movement of Barney’s automatic—­“you’d better behave while this telephone business is going on.”

The next moment Larry was hearing, or rather witnessing, the strangest telephone conversation of his experience.  Maggie was holding the transmitter, and Joe had the receiver at his ears, grimly covering the two men with the automatic.  Maggie obediently kept her palm tight over the mouthpiece during Joe’s brief whispered directions, and no one in the room except Joe, not even Maggie, had the slightest idea of what was really passing over the wires.

What Larry heard was no more than a dozen most commonplace words in the world, transformed into the most absorbing words in the language.  Joe ordered Maggie to answer with “hello” in her usual tone, which she did, and Joe, after a startled expression at the first words that came over the wire, listened with immobile face for four or five seconds.  Then he nodded imperatively to Maggie and she put her hand over the mouthpiece.

“Ask him how much, and when he wanted it to be paid,” he ordered.

“How much, and when does he want it to be paid?” repeated Maggie.

Again Joe listened for several moments; and then ordered as before:  “Say ‘Yes.’”

“Yes,” said Maggie.

Another period of waiting, and Joe ordered:  “Say, ’I’ve got a much better plan that supersedes the old.’”

“I’ve got a much better plan that supersedes the old.”

There was yet another period of waiting, then Joe commanded:  “Tell him he really mustn’t and say good-bye quick.”

“You really mustn’t!  Good-bye!”

The instant her “Good-bye” was out of her mouth Joe clicked the receiver upon its hook, and stood regarding the breathless Maggie.  His pale, stern face was not quite so severe as before.  Presently he spoke:  “I know now that you really were sick of what you’d been trying to do—­that you’d really broken away from these two—­that you’d really confessed to Dick, and are now all square with him.”

The word “Father!” struggled chokingly toward her lips.  But she only said: 

“I’m glad—­you know.”

“And you were shrewd in that guess you made of what one of these two would do.”  Joe crossed back to Barney and Old Jimmie.  “You two must have been almighty afraid, because of Larry Brainard, that your game was suddenly collapsing, and each must have been trying to grab a piece for himself before he ran away.”