Dick paused without to take some messages from Judkins, and Larry’s mind raced feverishly.  Dick Sherwood was the victim Maggie and Barney and Old Jimmie were so cautiously and elaborately trying to trim!  It seemed an impossible coincidence.  But no, not impossible, after all.  Their net had been spread for just such game:  a young man, impressionable, pleasure-loving, with plenty of money, and with no strings tied to his spending of it.  That Barney should have made his acquaintance was easily explained; to establish acquaintance with such persons as Dick was Barney’s specialty.  What more natural than that the high-spirited, irresponsible Dick should fall into this trap?—­or indeed that he should have been picked out in advance as the ideal victim and have been drawn into it?

“Hello, there!” grumbled Dick, entering.  “Why didn’t you answer a shipmate’s hail?”

“I heard you; but just then I was adding a column of figures, and I knew you’d look in.”

At that moment Larry noted the portrait of Maggie, looking up from the chair beside him.  With a swiftness which he tried to disguise into a mechanical action, he seized the painting and rolled it up, face inside.

“What’s that you’ve got?” demanded Dick.

“Just a little daub of my own.”

“So you paint, too.  What else can you do?  Let’s have a look.”

“It’s too rotten.  I’d rather let you see something else—­though all my stuff is bad.”

“You wouldn’t do any little thing, would you, to brighten this tiredest hour in the day of a tired business man,” complained Dick.  “I’ve really been a business man to-day, Captain.  Worked like the devil—­or an angel—­whichever works the harder.”

He lit a cigarette and settled with a sigh on the corner of Larry’s desk.  Larry regarded him with a stranger and more contradicting mixture of feelings than he had ever thought to contain:  solicitude for Dick—­jealousy of him—­and the instinct to protect Maggie.  This last seemed to Larry grotesquely absurd the instant it seethed up in him, but there the instinct was:  was Dick treating Maggie right?

“How was the show last night, Dick?”

“Punk!”

“I thought you said you were to see ‘The Jest.’  I’ve heard it’s one of the best things for years.”

“Oh, I guess the show’s all right.  But the company was poor.  My company, I mean.  The person I wanted to see couldn’t come.”

“Hope you had a supper party that made up for the disappointment,” pursued Larry, adroitly trying to lead him on.

“I sure had that, Captain!”

Dick slid to a chair beside Larry, dropped a hand on Larry’s knee, and said in a lowered tone: 

“Captain, I’ve recently met a new girl—­and believe me, she’s a knock-out!”

“Better keep clear of those show girls, Dick.”

“Never again!  The last one cured me for life.  Miss Cameron—­Maggie Cameron, how’s that for a name?—­is no Broadway girl, Captain.  She’s not even a New York girl.”