Still very nervous but calmer than she had been, Katie remained quiet when I raised my voice to reach Dicky waiting in the adjoining room.

“Oh, Dicky,” I called, “you may come now.”

Dicky drew a low chair in front of the couch where we sat.

“Tell me first, Katie,” he said kindly, “why do you think I want to put you in prison?  Because of the money?  Never mind that.  I want to talk to you of something else.”

But Katie was hysterically tugging at the neck of her gown.  From inside her bodice she took a tiny chamois skin bag, and ripping it open took out a carefully folded bill and handed it to Dicky.

“I never spend that money,” she said.  “I never mean to steal it.  But I had to go away queeck from your flat and I never, never dare come back, give you the money.  After two month, send my cousin to the flat, but he say you move, no know where.  There I always keep the money here.  I think maybe some time I find out where you live and write a letter to you, send the money.”

Dicky took the bill and unfolded it curiously.  A brown stain ran irregularly across one-half of it.

“Well, I’ll be eternally blessed,” he ejaculated, “if it isn’t the identical bill I gave her.  Ten-dollar bills were not so plentiful three years ago, and I remember this one so distinctly because of the stain.  The boys used to say I must have murdered somebody to get it, and that it was stained with blood.”

He turned to Katie again.

“The money is nothing, Katie.  Why did you run away that day?  I never have been able to finish that picture since.”

Katie’s eyes dropped.  Her cheeks flushed.

“I ’shamed to tell,” she murmured.

Dicky muttered an oath beneath his breath.  “I thought so,” he said slowly, then he spoke sternly: 

“Never mind being ashamed to tell, Katie.  I want the truth.  I worked at your portrait that morning, and then I had to go to the studio.  When I came back you had gone, bag and baggage, and with, the money I gave you to pay the tailor.  I never could finish that picture, and it would have brought me a nice little sum.”

My brain was whirling by this time.  Dicky in a flat with this ignorant Polish girl paying his tailor bills, and posing for portraits.  What did it all mean?

“Where did you go?” Dicky persisted.

Katie lifted her head and looked at him proudly.

“You know when you left that morning, Mr. Lestaire, he was painting, too?  Well, Mr. Graham, I always good girl in old country and here.  I go to confession.  I always keep good.  Mr. Lestaire, he kiss me, say bad tings to me.  He scare me.  I afraid if I stay I no be good girl.  So I run queeck away.  I never dare come bade.  That Mr. Lestaire he one bad man, one devil.”

Dicky whistled softly.

“So that was it?” he said.  “Well that was just about what that pup would do.  That was one reason I got out of our housekeeping arrangements.  He set too swift a pace for me, and that was going some in those days.”