assistant as soon as I get back to my
place."

"I told you I was squeezed financially--so the picture is yours. I'll
send you Mr. Hunt's present address when I receive your check. Make it
payable to 'cash.'"

When Mr. Graham had gone with the Italian mother--it was then the very
end of the afternoon--Larry wondered if his plan to draw Hunt out of his
hermitage was going to succeed; and wondered what would be the result,
if any, upon the relationship between Hunt and Miss Sherwood if Hunt
should come openly back into his world an acclaimed success, and
come with the changed attitude toward every one and every thing that
recognition bestows.

But something was to make Larry wonder even more a few minutes later.
Dick, that habitual late riser, had had to hurry away that morning
without speaking to him. Now, when he came home toward six o'clock, Dick
shouted cheerily from the hallway:

"Ahoy! Where you anchored, Captain Nemo?"

Larry did not answer. He sat over his papers as one frozen. He knew
now whose had been the elusively familiar voice he had heard outside
Maggie's door. It was Dick Sherwood's.

Dick paused without to take some messages from Judkins, and Larry's mind
raced feverishly. Dick Sherwood was the victim Maggie and Barney and Old
Jimmie were so cautiously and elaborately trying to trim! It seemed an
impossible coincidence. But no, not impossible, after all. Their net
had been spread for just such game: a young man, impressionable,
pleasure-loving, with plenty of money, and with no strings tied to his
spending of it. That Barney should have made his acquaintance was easily
explained; to establish acquaintance with such persons as Dick was
Barney's specialty. What more natural than that the high-spirited,
irresponsible Dick should fall into this trap?--or indeed that he should
have been picked out in advance as the ideal victim and have been drawn
into it?

"Hello, there!" grumbled Dick, entering. "Why didn't you answer a
shipmate's hail?"

"I heard you; but just then I was adding a column of figures, and I knew
you'd look in."

At that moment Larry noted the portrait of Maggie, looking up from the
chair beside him. With a swiftness which he tried to disguise into a
mechanical action, he seized the painting and rolled it up, face inside.

"What's that you've got?" demanded Dick.

"Just a little daub of my own."

"So you paint, too. What else can you do? Let's have a look."

"It's too rotten. I