Nevertheless after a heated argument he went wearily with Garry in a taxi, particularly individualistic in his attire. And he told the judge in a richer brogue than usual that he was a painter subject to irresistible fits of dreaminess and must be excused. Garry, aghast, stared at the judge and the judge, with peculiar interest stared at the delinquent and excused him.

"Fortunately," Garry told him later, "your civic duties haven't spoiled your day."

Kenny merely glanced at him with a gentle air of patience. He would like to remind Garry that he had wanted to work and, thanks to Brian, the law had intervened. Now the coffee would be cold and he hated the sight of cold coffee. It depressed him.

Things thickened alarmingly. At three that afternoon, when he answered a violent thump upon the wall, Garry found the Louis XV table in a cloud of smoke; it was littered with vouchers and check books. Kenny, with his teeth set and one hand clenched in his hair, was figuring with the speed of an expert without, Garry felt sure, an expert's results.

Brian, Kenny said aggrievedly, had always kept his check book straight.

"Look!" he flung out, indicating a problematical balance. "Look at that! And the fool says I'm overdrawn."

"What particular fool?"

"Some clod of a mathematician," explained Kenny with contempt, "whom the bank employs to insult its patrons. Look here, Garry! Look at that balance. Over a thousand dollars. Do you wonder I told him he had a sense of humor when he said I was overdrawn? The young popinjay!

Arguing with me about my own balance!"

"How did it end?"

"I told him," said Kenny formally, "that the bank would most likely demand his resignation in a few days. And when he began to grow mathematical and persistent, I hung up."

Garry patiently sorted the vouchers and balanced the check book while Kenny in frenzied consideration of a new complication roved around the studio and smoked. He was a G.o.d-fearing Irishman. He wanted peace.

But if ever a man's destiny knew unheard-of complication! Well, all of it could be traced to Brian's unscrupulous flight. He must come back.

Kenny felt that his career was menaced. Life in the studio had become intolerable. He had been embroiled in two scandals, thanks to Brian's bouillon cups and Brian's unscrupulous shirking of numismatic responsibility. Everybody was talking about him; he had Garry's word for it. He couldn't work. When he could he was summoned for jury duty. His accounts, like the studio, were in a mess and he'd overdrawn. If something didn't happen soon--

"Shut up!" said Garry. "How on earth do you suppose that I can work with you talking all over the studio? Here are three pages of checks when you were evidently hitting the high spots, that you've failed to subtract. Three on a page. That makes your balance overdrawn."

Kenny struck an att.i.tude of acute despair. "G.o.d of my fathers!" he groaned, changing color. "It can't be. Garry, it simply can not be!"

"It can and is," said Garry pushing away the book.

"Adams still owes me five thousand dollars for his wife's portrait,"

sputtered Kenny.

"And now he's out of town."

"What on earth did you do with Reynolds' last check? You had enough there to live a year."

Kenny looked dazed.

"I recognized the danger with Brian's commercial instinct gone," he stammered, "and--and conserved my funds."

"You must have. You bought a lot of clothes," reminded Garry. "And paid some bills."

"Some," admitted Kenny.

"Enough," commented Garry, "to establish, I suppose, one of your startling flurries of credit."

Kenny had meant to pay more. But the bank had put an end to that to-day by intruding into his private affairs. He'd even meant to redeem Brian's shotgun and anything else he'd p.a.w.ned.

"Lucky for Brian," put in Garry, "that you've mesmerized Simon into holding things indefinitely even when you don't pay the interest. And of course you blew in a good part of the check on something foolish."

Kenny said with dignity that he'd bought a rug, nothing foolish. It hung over there. An exquisite thing, sensuous and soft! Color and form enough to drive a man mad with delight. He'd dreamt of the thing for days before he bought it. Indeed he'd meant not to buy it but something had snapped in his brain when he looked at it. Look at the design. Never once did it tire the eye, free-flowing and sure. Its intricate simplicity was amazing.

"And you paid a small fortune for it," said Garry. "Don't sputter.

The voucher's here."

Kenny sulked. Finding that Garry still had a tendency to finger disconcerting checks and jot figures on a pad, he reached for his hat and went out.

"I'm going to do some ill.u.s.trating for Graham," he telephoned a little later, "if I do it quick. I'm with him now. I presume it's etiquette to do something financial when you're overdrawn. Brian always watched the bank to see that they put nothing over on me."

He disappeared from human ken for several days. Garry, sniffing the odor of coffee and cigarettes in the corridor outside his door, pictured his horrible concentration.

"It's that hazy autumn sort of weather that gets me," he telephoned nervously one morning. "I don't want to work and I've got to finish this stuff for Graham to-day. He'll pay at once if I do. Garry, I'm going to lock the studio door and throw the key over the transom to you. Don't let me out, no matter what I say."

Obediently Garry at four ignored a violent thump upon the wall. Then the telephone rang and Kenny said with some annoyance that the work was done.

When on the following day he found that Mr. Adams had returned and wanted, purposefully perhaps, to come to tea, he lost his temper and began at once to hunt cups, demanding of Garry why on earth Fate hadn't smiled upon him before he wasted his vigor and inspiration in endless hours of torture, doing pot-boilers.

"If he's coming to tea with a red-blooded check like that," said Garry, "I'll lend you some decent cups. Those bouillon cups are the limit."

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" said Kenny moodily. "I've talked with him. I've even answered his questions with politeness. A man who wants to know if you must have a north light to paint by will think it a rule of the guild to double-handle teacups."

CHAPTER XVII

KENNY DISAPPEARS

That night Whitaker brought him news of Brian. He was healthy and happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, Brian was over-reticent.

"And the postmark?" Kenny staring in disgust at a hole in his sock transferred his glance to Whitaker.

"That," said Whitaker, "I'm not at liberty to give. I've told you so before."

Kenny drew himself up to his full height.

"John--" he thundered.

The door opened and Mac Brett, the young sculptor on the floor above who harbored H. B., came in, somewhat mystified at the warmth of Whitaker's greeting.

"Come on down to the grill to dinner," he suggested. "Garry's down there and Jan. It's drizzling and a lot of men are staying in."

Kenny, moodily painting the skin beneath the hole in his sock black, flung down the brush and found his coat.

"Once," said Mac in a panic of laughter, "he painted hairs on the bald parts of Frieda Fuller's pony-skin coat. Thick, plutocraticky sort of hairs. I shan't forget 'em. And they melted and smudged her neck.

Remember, Kenny? You ridged 'em beautifully--"

Kenny did not answer. He strode toward the door. Mac and Whitaker exchanged comprehending glances of dismay and followed him down to the grill.