at my place."

And the upshot of it was, he smuggled me and the unwanted painting out
of the Museum. Never mind how. I have done quite enough as it is to
jeopardize his job and my own welcome up there.

* * * * *

It was not until I had paid off my taxi and lugged the unwieldy
parallelogram of canvas and wood upstairs to my bachelor apartment that
I bothered to wonder if it might be valuable. I never did find out, but
from the first I was deeply impressed.

Hung over my own fireplace, it looked as large and living as a scene
glimpsed through a window or, perhaps, on a stage in a theater. The
capering pink bodies caught new lights from my lamp, lights that glossed
and intensified their shape and color but did not reveal any new
details. I pored once more over the cryptic legend: _I sold my soul that
I might paint a living picture._

A living picture--was it that? I could not answer. For all my honest
delight in such things, I cannot be called expert or even knowing as
regards art. Did I even like the Golgotha painting? I could not be sure
of that, either. And the rest of the inscription, about selling a soul;
I was considerably intrigued by that, and let my thoughts ramble on the
subject of Satanist complexes and the vagaries of half-crazy painters.
As I read, that evening, I glanced up again and again at my new
possession. Sometimes it seemed ridiculous, sometimes sinister. Shortly
after midnight I rose, gazed once more, and then turned out the parlor
lamp. For a moment, or so it seemed, I could see those dancers, so many
dim-pink silhouettes in the sudden darkness. I went to the kitchen for a
bit of whisky and water, and thence to my bedroom.

I had dreams. In them I was a boy again, and my mother and sister were
leaving the house to go to a theater where--think of it!--Richard
Mansfield would play _Beau Brummell_. I, the youngest, was told to stay
at home and mind the troublesome furnace. I wept copiously in my
disappointed loneliness, and then Mansfield himself stalked in, in full
Brummell regalia. He laughed goldenly and stretched out his hand in warm
greeting. I, the lad of my dreams, put out my own hand, then was
frightened when he would not loosen his grasp. I tugged, and he laughed
again. The gold of his laughter turned suddenly hard, cold. I tugged
with all my strength, and woke.

* * * * *

Something held me tight by the wrist.

*