"Why the explanation?" Larry looked blank and again Mary-Clare flushed.
"I can't see why. By the way, Mary-Clare, those squatters at the Point are going to get a rough deal. Either they're going to pay regular, or be kicked out. I tell you when Tim Maclin sets his jaw, there is going to be something doing."
This was unfortunate, but Larry was ill at ease.
"You better listen to Maclin and not Peter Heathcote." Larry retraced his steps. His doubt of Northrup had led him astray.
"Maclin's a brute," she said quietly. "I prefer to listen to my friends."
"Maclin's our friend. Yours and mine. You'll learn that some day."
"I doubt it, Larry, but he's your employer and I do not forget that."
"I wouldn't. And you're going to change your mind some fine day, my girl, about a lot of things."
"I'm sleeping outside, Mary-Clare." Larry rose lazily. "I just dropped in to--to call." He laughed unpleasantly.
"I'm sorry, Larry, that you feel as you do."
"Like hell you are!" The words were barely audible. "I'm going to give you a free hand, Mary-Clare, but I'm going to let folks see your game. That's square enough."
"All right, Larry." Mary-Clare's eyes flickered. Then: "Why did you take those letters?"
"I haven't taken any letters. What you hoaxing up?" He waited a moment but when Mary-Clare made no reply he stalked from the house angrily and into the night.
Maclin rarely discussed Larry's private affairs with him, but he controlled them, nevertheless, indirectly. His hold on Larry was subtle and far-reaching. It had its beginning in the old college days when the older man discovered that the younger could be manipulated, by flattery and cheap tricks, into abject servitude. Larry was not as keen-witted as Maclin, but he had a superficial cleverness; a lack of moral fibre and a certain talent that, properly controlled, offered no end of possibility.
So Maclin affixed himself to young Rivers in the days before the doctor's death; he and Larry had often drifted apart but came together again like steel responding to the same magnet. While apparently intimate with Rivers, Maclin never permitted him to pass a given line, and this restriction often chafed Larry's pride and egotism; still, he dared not rebel, for there were things in his past that had best be forgotten, or at least not referred to.