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164 thought you had had enough trouble for one day. But the Registrar has written me some news I wouldn't say pleased me down to the ground. Says he wrote another letter, which I never got."

At this Philip flinched a little, but even now the father trusted him too much to suspect the extent of his turpitude.

"I want you to come into the office and settle down," the old man explained, "there'll be a fine business for you when I die, my boy. But first we'd better get this picture out of the way. It's caused enough trouble already."

He picked up the painting and started for the closet.

"Let's put it in the attic, father. The closet's locked and I've lost the key."

But something had attracted the other's eye,—a bit of wine-coloured skirt caught in that door.

Now after a very bad half hour, Carlotta was almost welcoming release, even by an enemy. It was a fairly large and airy closet, but, nevertheless, she had sweated and trembled at the possibility of discovery, as well as the violence of the storm and the uncanny incident of the painting. Nerve in plenty she might have for her business and the ordinary exigencies of Broadway, but her old friend, the property man, had no such powerful "props" in his possession. As for the real demonstrations of the elements, they aways [sic] seemed so far above a sky-scraper, so futile to one behind steel and concrete. But in this creaking and groaning "hangout," why, as the old gentleman had just said, "this was something else again." And that yarn which she couldn't help hearing against her inhibitions, not of taste