“Never you mind Maggie! She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn't know anything.”
Larry looked in surprise at his grandmother. There was a flash in her old eyes; but the next moment the spark was gone.
“Sure you're up against it—but I'll be rooting for you.” Hunt was grinning. “But say, young fellow, what made you decide to vote the other ticket?”
Larry was trained at reading faces; and in the rough-hewn, grinning features of Hunt he read good-fellowship. Larry swiftly responded in kind, for from the moment he had pulled the mask of being a fool from the painter and shown him to be a real artist, he had felt drawn toward this impecunious swashbuckler of the arts. So he now repeated the business motives which he had presented to Barney and Old Jimmie. As Larry talked he became more spontaneous, and after a time he was telling of the effect upon him of seeing various shrewd men locked up and unexercised in prison. And presently his reminiscence settled upon one prison acquaintance: a man past middle age, clever in his generation, who had already done some fifteen years of a long sentence. He was, said Larry, grim and he rarely spoke; but a close, wordless friendship had developed between them. Only once, in an unusually relaxed mood, had the old convict spoken of himself, but what he had then said had had a greater part in rousing Larry to his new decision than the words of any other man.
“It was a queer story Joe let out,” continued Larry. “Before he was sent away he had a kid, just a baby whose mother was dead. He told me he wanted to have his kid brought up without ever knowing anything about the kind of people he knew and the kind of life he'd lived. He wanted it to grow up among decent people. He had money put away and he had an old friend, a pal, that he'd trust with anything. So he turned over his money and his baby to his friend, and gave orders that the kid was to be brought up decent, sent to school, and that the kid was never to know anything about Joe. Of course the baby was too young then ever to remember him; and when he gets out he's going to keep absolutely clear of the kid's life—he wants his kid to have the best possible chance.”
“What is his whole name, and what was he sent up for?” queried the Duchess, that flickering fire of interest once more in her old eyes.
“Joe Ellison. He was an old-time confidence man. He got caught in a jam—there had been drinking—there was some shooting—and he had attempted manslaughter tacked on to the charge of swindling. But Joe said everybody had been drinking and that the shooting was accidental.”
“Joe Ellison—I knew him,” said the Duchess. “He was about the cleverest man of his day. But I never knew he had a child. Who was this best friend of his?”
“Joe Ellison didn't mention his name,” answered Larry. “You see Joe spoke of his story only once. But he then said that he'd had letters once a month telling how fine the kid was getting on—till three or four years ago when he got word that his friend had died. The way things stand now, Joe won't know how to find the kid when he gets out even if he should want to find it—and he wouldn't know it even if he saw it. Up in Sing Sing when I had nothing else to do,” concluded Larry, “I tell you I thought a lot about that situation—for it certainly is some situation: Joe Ellison for fifteen years in prison with just one big idea in his life, the idea being the one thing he felt he was really doing or ever could do, his very life built on that one idea: that outside, somewhere, was his kid growing up into a fine young person—never guessing it had such a father—and Joe never intending to see it again and not being able to know it if he ever should see it. I tell you, after learning Joe's story, it made me feel that I'd had enough of the old life.”
Again the Duchess spoke. “Did Joe ever mention its name?”