Hunt swung the canvas from his easel and stood it against the wall.
"That'll be all for you, Jimmie. Beat it and make room for Maggie.
Maggie, take your same pose."
Old Jimmie ambled forward and gazed at his portrait as Hunt was
settling an unfinished picture on his easel. It had rather amused
Jimmie and filled in his idle time to sit for the crazy painter; and,
incidentally, another picture of him would do him no particular harm
since the police already had all the pictures they needed of him over
at Headquarters. As he gazed at Hunt's work Old Jimmie snickered.
"I say, Nuts, what you goin' to do with this mess of paint?"
"Going to sell it to the Metropolitan Museum, you old sinner!" snapped
Hunt.
Old Jimmie cackled at the joke. He knew pictures; that is, good
pictures. He had had an invisible hand in more than one clever
transaction in which handsome pictures alleged to have been smuggled
in, Gainsboroughs and Romneys and such (there had been most profit for
him in handling the forgeries of these particular masters), had been
put, with an air of great secrecy, into the hands of divers newly rich
gentlemen who believed they were getting masterpieces at bargain
prices through this evasion of customs laws.
"Nuts," chuckled Old Jimmie, "this junk wouldn't be so funny if you
didn't seem to believe you were really painting.
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