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. “I sized you up for that kind of rat and was watching you,” continued Joe in his same awful grimness. “I'm not going to shoot you, unless you make me. I'm going to twist that pretty neck of yours. But first, out with anything you've got to say for yourself!” “I haven't had anything to do with this business,” said Barney, trying to affect a bold manner. “You lie! I know that in this game against Dick Sherwood, in which you used my girl, you were the real leader!” “Well--even if I did use your girl, I only used her the way I found her.” “You lie again! I know how your kind work: cleverly putting crooked ideas into girls' minds, and exciting their imagination, so they'll work with you. Your case is closed.” He turned to his one-time friend. “What have you got to say for yourself, Jimmie Carlisle?” Old Jimmie believed that his last hour was come. He showed something of the defiant, almost maniacal courage of a coward who realizes he can retreat no farther. “What I got to say, Joe Ellison,” he snarled in a sudden rage which bared his yellow teeth, “is that I'm even with you at last!” “Even with me? What for?” “For the way you double-crossed me in nineteen-one in that Gordon business. You never gave me a dime--said the thing had fallen down--yet I know there was a big haul!” “I told you the truth. That Gordon thing was a fizzle.” “There's where you're lying! It was a clean-up! And I knew you'd been cheating me out of my share in other deals!” “You're absolutely wrong, Jimmie Carlisle. But if you thought that, why didn't you have it out with me at the time?”