eaned against the walls of the shabby studio. There was the
Duchess: incredibly old, the face a web of wrinkles, the lips indrawn
over toothless and shrunken gums, the nose a thin, curved beak, the
eyes deep-set, gleaming, inscrutable, watching; and drawn tight over
the hair--even Maggie did not know whether that hair was a wig or the
Duchess's--the faded Oriental shawl which was fastened beneath her chin
and which fell over her thin, bent chest. There was O'Flaherty, the
good-natured policeman on the beat. There was the old watchmaker next
door. There was Black Hurley, the notorious gang leader, who sometimes
swaggered into the district like a dirty and evil feudal lord. There was
a Jewish pushcart peddler, white-bearded and skull-capped. There was an
Italian mother sitting on the curb, her feet in the gutter, smiling down
at the baby that was hungrily suckling at her milk-heavy breast. And so
on, and so on. Just the ordinary, uninteresting things Maggie saw around
the block. There was not a single pretty picture in the lot.

Hunt swung the canvas from his easel and stood it against the wall.
"That'll be all for you, Jimmie. Beat it and make room for Maggie.
Maggie, take your same pose."

Old Jimmie ambled forward and gazed at his portrait as Hunt was settling
an unfinished picture on his easel. It had rather amused Jimmie and
filled in his idle time to sit for the crazy painter; and, incidentally,
another picture of him would do him no particular harm since the police
already had all the pictures they needed of him over at Headquarters. As
he gazed at Hunt's work Old Jimmie snickered.

"I say, Nuts, what you goin' to do with this mess of paint?"

"Going to sell it to the Metropolitan Museum, you old sinner!" snapped
Hunt.

Old Jimmie cackled at the joke. He knew pictures; that is, good
pictures. He had had an invisible hand in more than one clever
transaction in which handsome pictures alleged to have been smuggled in,
Gainsboroughs and Romneys and such (there had been most profit for him
in handling the forgeries of these particular masters), had been put,
with an air of great secrecy, into the hands of divers newly rich
gentlemen who believed they were getting masterpieces at bargain prices
through this evasion of customs laws.

"Nuts," chuckled Old Jimmie, "this junk wouldn't be so funny if you
didn't seem to believe you were really painting."

"Junk! Funny!" Hunt swung around, one big hand closed about Jimm