During this week of waiting and necessary inactivity Larry concentrated upon another phase of his many-sided plan--to make of himself a business success. As has been said, he saw his chance of this in the handling of Miss Sherwood's affairs; and saw it particularly in an idea that had begun to grow upon him since he became aware, through statements and letters from the agents turned over to him, of the extent of the Sherwood real-estate holdings and since he had got some glimmering of their condition. His previous venturings about the city had engendered in him a sense of moderate security; so he now began to make flying trips into New York in the smart roadster Miss Sherwood had placed at his disposal.
On each trip Larry made swift visits to several of the properties, until finally he had covered the entire list Miss Sherwood had furnished him through the agents. His survey corroborated his surmise.
The property, mostly neglected apartment and tenement houses, was in an almost equally bad way whether one regarded it from the standpoint of sanitation, comfort, or cold financial returns. The fault for this was due to the fact that the Sherwoods had left the property entirely in the care of the agents, and the agents, being old, old-fashioned, and weary of business to the point of being almost ready to retire, had left the property to itself.
Prompted by these bad conditions, and to some degree by the then critical housing famine, with its records of some thousands of families having no place at all to go and some thousands of families being compelled for the sake of mere shelter to pay two and three times what they could afford for a few poor rooms, and with its records of profiteering landlords, Larry began to make notes for a plan which he intended later to elaborate--a plan which he tentatively entitled: "Suggestions for the Development of Sherwood Real-Estate Holdings." Larry, knowing from the stubs of Miss Sherwood's checkbook what would be likely to please her, gave as much consideration to Service as to Profit. The basis of his growing plan was good apartments at fair rentals. That he saw as the greatest of public services in the present crisis. But the return upon the investment had to be a reasonable one. Larry did not believe in Charity, except for extreme cases. He believed, and his belief had grown out of a wide experience with many kinds of people, that Charity, of course to a smaller extent, was as definitely a source of social evil as the then much-talked-of Profiteering.
In the meantime he was seeing his old friend, Joe Ellison, every day; perhaps smoking with Ellison in his cottage after he had finished his day's work among the roses, perhaps walking along the bluff which hung above the Sound, whose cool, clear waters splashed with vacation laziness upon the shingle. The two men rarely spoke, and never of the past. Larry was well acquainted with, and understood, the older man's deep-rooted wish to avoid all talk bearing upon deeds and associates of other days; that was a part of his life and a phase of existence that Joe Ellison was trying to forget, and Larry by his silence deferred to his friend's desire.
On the day after Joe Ellison's visit to the Duchess, Larry had received a note from his grandmother, addressed, of course, to "Mr. Brandon." There was no danger in her writing Larry if she took adequate precautions: mail addressed to Cedar Crest was not bothered by postal and police officials; it was only mail which came to the house of the Duchess which received the attention of these gentlemen.
The note was one which the Duchess, after that night of thought which had so shaken her old heart, had decided to be a necessity if her plan of never telling of her discovery of Maggie's real paternity were to be a success. The major portion of her note dwelt upon a generality with which Larry already was acquainted: Joe's desire to keep clear of all talk touching upon the deeds and the people of his past. And then in a careless-seeming last sentence the Duchess packed the carefully calculated substance of her entire note:
"It may not be very important--but particularly avoid ever mentioning the mere name of Jimmie Carlisle. They used to know each other, and their acquaintance is about the bitterest thing Joe Ellison has to remember."
Of course he'd never mention Old Jimmie Carlisle, Larry said to himself as he destroyed the note--never guessing, in making this natural response to what seemed a most natural request, that he had become an unconscious partner in the plan of the warm-hearted, scheming Duchess.
There was one detail of Joe Ellison's behavior which aroused Larry's mild curiosity. Directly beneath one of Joe's gardens, hardly a hundred yards away, was a bit of beach and a pavilion which were used in common by the families from the surrounding estates. The girls and younger women were just home from schools and colleges, and at high tide were always on the beach. At this period, whenever he was at Cedar Crest, Larry saw Joe, his work apparently forgotten, gazing fixedly down upon the young figures splashing about the water in their bright bathing-suits or lounging about the pavilion in their smart summer frocks.
This interest made Larry wonder, though to be sure not very seriously.
