not suffer through any curiosity
of mine."

"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his
soup; "I don't mind it a bit. I'm a regular Oriental magazine
with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad.
In fact, we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate
for things of this sort. Somebody's always stopping and wanting
to know what brought us down so low in the world. For a
sandwich and a glass of beer I tell 'em that drink did it. For
corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give 'em the
hard-hearted-landlord--six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story.
A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street
tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This
is the first spread of this kind I've stumbled against. I haven't
got a story to fit it. I'll tell you what, Mr. Chalmers, I'm
going to tell you the truth for this, if you'll listen to it.
It'll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones."

An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction
while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table.

"Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?" he asked, with a strange
smile.

"I remember the name," said Chalmers. "He was a painter, I think, of
a good deal of prominence a few years ago."

"Five years," said the guest. "Then I went down like a chunk of
lead. I'm Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for
$2,000. After that I couldn't have found a sitter for a gratis
picture."

"What was the trouble?" Chalmers could not resist asking.

"Funny thing," answered Plumer, grimly. "Never quite understood it
myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd
and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a
fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever
I finished a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and
look queerly at one another."

"I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing
out in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original.
I don't know how I did it--I painted what I saw--but I know it did
me. Some of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their
pictures. I painted the portrait of a very beautiful and popular
society dame. When it was finished her husband looked at it with a
peculiar expression on his face, and the next week he sued for
divorce."

"I remember one case of a prominent banker w