remind Garry that he had wanted to work and, thanks to Brian,
the law had intervened. Now the coffee would be cold and he hated the
sight of cold coffee. It depressed him.

Things thickened alarmingly. At three that afternoon, when he answered
a violent thump upon the wall, Garry found the Louis XV table in a
cloud of smoke; it was littered with vouchers and check books. Kenny,
with his teeth set and one hand clenched in his hair, was figuring with
the speed of an expert without, Garry felt sure, an expert's results.
Brian, Kenny said aggrievedly, had always kept his check book straight.

"Look!" he flung out, indicating a problematical balance. "Look at
that! And the fool says I'm overdrawn."

"What particular fool?"

"Some clod of a mathematician," explained Kenny with contempt, "whom
the bank employs to insult its patrons. Look here, Garry! Look at
that balance. Over a thousand dollars. Do you wonder I told him he
had a sense of humor when he said I was overdrawn? The young popinjay!
Arguing with me about my own balance!"

"How did it end?"

"I told him," said Kenny formally, "that the bank would most likely
demand his resignation in a few days. And when he began to grow
mathematical and persistent, I hung up."

Garry patiently sorted the vouchers and balanced the check book while
Kenny in frenzied consideration of a new complication roved around the
studio and smoked. He was a God-fearing Irishman. He wanted peace.
But if ever a man's destiny knew unheard-of complication! Well, all of
it could be traced to Brian's unscrupulous flight. He must come back.
Kenny felt that his career was menaced. Life in the studio had become
intolerable. He had been embroiled in two scandals, thanks to Brian's
bouillon cups and Brian's unscrupulous shirking of numismatic
responsibility. Everybody was talking about him; he had Garry's word
for it. He couldn't work. When he could he was summoned for jury
duty. His accounts, like the studio, were in a mess and he'd
overdrawn. If something didn't happen soon--

"Shut up!" said Garry. "How on earth do you suppose that I can work
with you talking all over the studio? Here are three pages of checks
when you were evidently hitting the high spots, that you've failed to
subtract. Three on a page. That makes your balance overdrawn."

Kenny struck an attitude of acute despair. "God of my fathers!" he
groaned, changing color. "It can't be. Garry, it simply ca