“What will you pay?”
“What you paid for it—three thousand.”
“That's an awful drop from what I expected. When can you pay it?”
“I'll send you my check by an assistant as soon as I get back to my place.”
“I told you I was squeezed financially—so the picture is yours. I'll send you Mr. Hunt's present address when I receive your check. Make it payable to 'cash.'”
When Mr. Graham had gone with the Italian mother—it was then the very end of the afternoon—Larry wondered if his plan to draw Hunt out of his hermitage was going to succeed; and wondered what would be the result, if any, upon the relationship between Hunt and Miss Sherwood if Hunt should come openly back into his world an acclaimed success, and come with the changed attitude toward every one and every thing that recognition bestows.
But something was to make Larry wonder even more a few minutes later. Dick, that habitual late riser, had had to hurry away that morning without speaking to him. Now, when he came home toward six o'clock, Dick shouted cheerily from the hallway:
“Ahoy! Where you anchored, Captain Nemo?”
Larry did not answer. He sat over his papers as one frozen. He knew now whose had been the elusively familiar voice he had heard outside Maggie's door. It was Dick Sherwood's.
Dick paused without to take some messages from Judkins, and Larry's mind raced feverishly. Dick Sherwood was the victim Maggie and Barney and Old Jimmie were so cautiously and elaborately trying to trim! It seemed an impossible coincidence. But no, not impossible, after all. Their net had been spread for just such game: a young man, impressionable, pleasure-loving, with plenty of money, and with no strings tied to his spending of it. That Barney should have made his acquaintance was easily explained; to establish acquaintance with such persons as Dick was Barney's specialty. What more natural than that the high-spirited, irresponsible Dick should fall into this trap?—or indeed that he should have been picked out in advance as the ideal victim and have been drawn into it?