Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/63

 seller with fire in his eye and indignation in his voice. He loudly proclaimed that the silver coin she had given him was spurious. This, once she had comprehended his dialect, she firmly but gently denied, only to be met with a louder storm of abusive anger. So persistent were his outcries that first the child and then the uniformed nurse followed the miniature-painter into the hallway, where, apparently by accident, the door closed behind them.

Yet in the few moments during which that altercation took place the dowdy old lady in black was the most active figure in Palermo. She had fitted key-blanks covered with coloured wax to each of the doors leading from that room. She had experimentally lifted the telephone receiver and heard a voice answer from the other end of the wire. She had examined the desk drawers, and had traced out the wire-circuits, and had even made careful note of what lay immediately beyond the north-fronting windows.

When the miniature-painter and her youthful sitter re-entered the room they saw this same old lady dozing heavily in her arm-chair. The child resumed her pose in the mellow side-light from the north window. The nurse went back to her Sudermann. The painter once more took up her brush. But those repeated interruptions seemed to have taken the zest from her touch.

She bent over her work for several minutes. Then she suddenly pushed back her chair, stood up, and announced that the sitting would have to end. There could be another appointment, if necessary. But she could not go on with the picture that day.

The old lady in black, pulling herself together after