“Jimmy’s landlady was fat an’ greasy an’ foreign-lookin’, an’ she didn’t seem ter understand what I was talkin’ about till I repeated a bit sharply:--
“’Yes, his pictures. I’ve come fer ’em.’
“Then she shook her head.
“‘Meester Hadley did not have any pictures.’
“’But he must have had ’em,’ says I, ‘fer them papers an’ magazines he worked for. He made ’em!’
“She shook her head again; then she gave a queer hitch to her shoulders, and a little flourish with her hands.
“‘Oh--ze pictures! He did do them--once--a leetle: months ago.’
“‘But the prize,’ says I. ‘The prize ter James Hadley!’
“Then she laughed as if she suddenly understood.
“Oh, but it is ze grand mistake you are makin’,’ she cried, in her silly, outlandish way of talkin’. ‘There is a Meester James Hadley, an’ he does make pictures--beautiful pictures--but it is not this one. This Meester Hadley did try, long ago, but he failed to succeed, so my son said; an’ he had to--to cease. For long time he has worked for me, for the grocer, for any one who would pay--till a leetle while ago. Then he left. In ze new clothes he had bought, he went away. Ze old ones-- burned. He had nothing else.’