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“Never mind!” The actor looked nervously about. Nothing but flat expressionless faces, dark eyes that avoided his.

“I think I fell in with your plan very neatly,” Smith reminded him. “When that Chinese detective, after he’d punctured your confession, asked me again what I’d heard—well, I said what you wanted me to, didn’t I? I backed up what you'd been saying. I could have exploded a bomb right then and there—but I didn’t. Please remember that.”

“I do remember it. And I rather expected you’d be around this morning to blackmail me——”

“My dear sir”—Smith raised a thin freckled hand—“you might have spared me that. I have some shreds of respectability left, and—er—what you said is scarcely in my line. It just occurred to me that as an intelligent man, a practitioner of one of the allied arts, you might possibly be interested in my work.” He indicated the canvas. “I happen to have a sample with me,” he added brightly.

Fyfe laughed. “You're a rather subtle person, Mr. Smith. Suppose I did buy one of your paintings—what would you do with the money?”

Smith licked his lips. “I’d get out of this place for ever. I’m fed up here. For the past year I’ve been thinking about going home—to my folks in Cleveland. I don’t know whether they’d be glad to see me—if I had decent clothes and a bit of money in my pocket—that might help.”

“How did you get here in the first place?” the actor inquired.

“I went down to the South Seas to paint. Might be a good place for some people—but for me—well, the