Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/330

 She still stood at the far side of the room, but all the while that she spoke she kept watching the huge blonde figure facing Kestner.

"For two months I have been in this man's pay," she slowly and distinctly said.

"In this man's pay?" echoed Kestner.

"I was alone, and without money," she went determinedly on in her flat and unhurried monotone. "A dealer for whom I had copied eight gallery canvasses went away without paying me. I was in trouble about a studio I had taken from an English artist in the Via Cavour. I had to move to a cheap pension. And even there the same trouble presented itself."

"Go on," prompted Kestner.

"Then this man came to me, when I was making a copy of Raphael's Sybils in Santa Maria Delle Pace, for a Pittsburgh banker who countermanded the order when he found it wouldn't fit his dining-room. I seemed to be at the end of my rope. Then this man asked me to copy a signature for him. He said that a copy would be worth five hundred lire to him. I did it, in the end, and he paid me. Then he came again, saying that a friend of his held to have credentials and passports to take him through the Turkish lines to Adrianople."

"Go on," again commanded Kestner as she came to a stop.

"I put him off, day by day, until my money was gone and I was helpless again. There seemed no other way. Then I borrowed what money I could from the piccolo who used to run errands for me. I borrowed that money to cable to you at Washington.