you're a
great painter?"

"Of course I'm a great painter!" shouted Hunt. "Who should know it
better than I do?"

"Then what's a great painter doing down here? What's the game you're
trying to put over, posing as--"

"Listen, son," Hunt grinned. "You've called me and I've got to show my
cards. Only you mustn't ever tell--nor must Maggie; the Duchess doesn't
talk, anyway. No need bothering you just now with a lot of details about
myself. It's enough to say that people wouldn't pay me except when I did
the usual pretty rot; no one believed in the other stuff I wanted to
do. I wanted to get away from that bunch; I wanted to do real studies
of human people, with their real nature showing through. So I beat it.
Understand so far?"

"But why pose as a dub down here?"

"I never started the yarn that I was a dub. The people who looked at my
work, and laughed, started that talk. I didn't shout out that I was
a great artist for the mighty good reason that if I had, and had been
believed, the people who posed for me either wouldn't have done it or
would have been so self-conscious that they would have tried to look
like some one else, and would never have shown me themselves at all.
Thinking me a joke, they just acted natural. Which, young man, is about
all you need to know."

Maggie looked on breathlessly at the two men, bewildered by this new
light in which Hunt was presented, and fascinated by the tense alertness
of her hero, Larry.

Slowly Larry's tensity dissipated. "I don't know about the rest of your
make-up," he said slowly, "but as a painter you're a whale."

"The rest of him's all right, too," put in the dry, unemotional voice of
the Duchess. "Dinner's ready. Come on."

As they moved to the table Hunt clapped a big hand on Larry's shoulder.
"And to think," he chuckled, "it took a crook fresh from Sing Sing to
discover me as a great artist! You're clever, Larry--clever! Maggie, get
the corkscrew into action and fill the glasses with the choicest vintage
of H2O. A toast. Here's to Larry!"

CHAPTER V

The dinner was simple: beef stewed with potatoes and carrots and onions,
and pie, and real coffee. But it measured up to Hunt's boast: the chef
of the Ritz, limited to so simple a menu, could indeed have done no
better. And Larry, after his prison fare, was dining as dine the gods.

The irrepressible Hunt, trying to read this new specimen that had come
under his observation, sought to draw Larry out. "B