‘Well, then, where did you get it? He can’t mind telling us that,’ said Mrs. Peets in her decided tone.

Fascinated, they stared at the medium-sized oblong of brown paper, Mrs. Stornway still convinced that it was the one her second sight had revealed to her.

‘I got it in Java,’ said Mr. Blandfoot from the steps.

They all three nodded at each other, as if a secret suspicion was at last openly confirmed.

‘And how did you get it?’ persisted Mrs. Peets. ‘After everything we’ve done for you, three tired perspiring women, I think you might tell us.’

Mr. Blandfoot paused a moment. ‘It was given me by a man I met,’ he said at last. ‘He painted it specially for me.’

‘Ah, then, it’s a portrait of you,’ put in Mrs. Pepperthwaite quickly, as though to get her say in before the others could speak. ‘Just the head, perhaps?’ she suggested, scrutinizing the back of the picture which looked too small for a full length.

‘No, it’s not a portrait of me,’ said Mr. Blandfoot, his voice dwelling on the preposition. ‘It would be a pity to waste a good canvas on me, wouldn’t it?’ So yellow did his face look in the high shadowy place where he sat that for a moment nobody spoke. Mrs. Stornway’s fluttering ‘How can you say such a ridiculous thing?’ came too late. Mr. Blandfoot seemed to have observed the pause, for there was a noticeable grimness in his voice as he added:

‘In fact it’s not a portrait at all—of any living person.’

‘Oh, then he’s dead,’ concluded Mrs. Pepperthwaite quickly.

‘There’s more than one,’ Mr. Blandfoot rejoined. Some would say they’re dead; some would say they never lived at all; some would say they’re still living. I’m a plain man: I can’t pretend to judge.’

‘You say you’re plain,’ said Mrs. Peets, a little impatiently. ‘But you speak in riddles. I expect it’s a mythological subject.’

‘You’re not far wrong,’ said Mr. Blandfoot. ‘Just a little blasphemous, that’s all.’

‘I don’t care for them much myself,’ observed Mrs. Peets. ‘And how can it be a mythological subject, if it was painted specially for you? I thought they never did that sort of thing now.’

‘By request,’ said Mr. Blandfoot, who seemed to enjoy the conversation, ‘they’ll do almost anything.’

‘Well, we’ve learned a certain amount,’ said Mrs. Peets briskly, ‘though I must say it’s been like drawing blood out of a stone. It’s a semi-mythological picture, painted in Java at Mr. Blandfoot’s request. Who, may I ask, was the artist?’

‘I’m afraid his name wouldn’t mean anything to you, though in his time he was supreme,’ said Mr. Blandfoot.

‘Well, really, Mr. Blandfoot,’ protested Mrs. Pepperthwaite bridling, ‘you seem to think we don’t know anything about Art. Settlemarsh isn’t a big place, but we have a picture-gallery, as you should know by this time.’

‘Yes, now that you’ve insulted us,’ said Mrs. Peets, ‘I think you ought to let us see the picture. We simply cannot wait another minute.’

‘Well, there it is,’ said Mr. Blandfoot. ‘Look at it. Excuse me coming down, my foot’s gone to sleep.’ He began to wave it in the air.

Together they walked slowly towards the picture. Mrs. Peets took it and reverently but firmly turned it round towards the light. First came an impression of blue, stabbed by an arrow of white. Then the subject revealed itself to all their eyes.

‘Why, it’s the Matterhorn!’ Mrs. Peets exclaimed.

‘No, Mt. Cervin,’ said Mrs. Pepperthwaite, examining it more closely.

‘They’re both the same,’ said Mrs. Stornway, who had travelled.

‘Then it’s not the picture!’ they cried in chorus, the inflexion of their voices making a very chord of disappointment.

‘No,’ said Mr. Blandfoot, ‘it’s not the picture. Why, did you think it was?’

‘Now I call that too bad of you,’ said Mrs. Peets.

‘Isn’t he a tease?’ demanded Mrs. Pepperthwaite with ineffective playfulness.

‘I don’t believe they ever try to climb the Matterhorn from this side,’ announced Mrs. Stornway. ‘But the picture will go very nicely here.’ As though fortified by the knowledge of Mrs. Marling’s friendship she was the first to recover herself. There was a silence while she fitted the very blue print into a space between two photographic jungle-studies. When she had finished she looked round the crowded walls and said in a voice that sounded hurt but well-bred:

‘But now there’s no room for the real picture—the one Mr. Blandfoot wouldn’t show us.’

‘Oh,’ said he, still from the top of the steps, ‘that’s hung already.’

‘But we’ve been everywhere,’ protested Mrs. Pepperthwaite, who couldn’t forgo the appearance of curiosity as easily as could Mrs. Stornway.

‘No,’ said Mr. Blandfoot, his voice conveying reproach, ‘not quite everywhere.’

Both of the other women suffered while Mrs. Pepperthwaite racked her memory for places they had not seen. Her mental processes were becoming clear even to herself when Mrs. Peets cut in:

‘Not in the coal cellar, for instance.’

‘No,’ said Mr. Blandfoot. ‘The picture has never been there.’

‘So it walks about, does it?’ said Mrs. Peets. ‘How curious.’ She was still ruffled, as they all were, by the practical joke that they felt had been played on them.

‘I usually take it with me,’ Mr. Blandfoot admitted.

‘Then it must be a miniature,’ declared Mrs. Pepperthwaite triumphantly. Her less sophisticated nature quickly threw off its mood of sulkiness, but her companions still stood on their dignity.

‘No,’ said Mr. Blandfoot, who always seemed pleased to disagree. ‘It’s a fair size—the ordinary size.’

‘What is the ordinary size?’ demanded Mrs. Peets.

‘Oh,’ Mr. Blandfoot replied, making a wide gesture on his airy perch, ‘the size that fits the circumstances.’

‘What are the circumstances?’ Mrs. Peets persisted.

‘Well, the flesh, for example, is the circumstances of the soul.’

The three women received this dictum in silence. Doubt and disappointment appeared in their faces. What a tame dull ending to an enterprise that had seemed so full of promise. Mrs. Pepperthwaite began looking behind the sofa for her bag; Mrs. Stornway picked up hers and started to put on her gloves. Only Mrs. Peets held her ground. She looked up thoughtfully at Mr. Blandfoot, who had the appearance of an umpire at a tennis match.

‘I don’t suppose you want to sell your picture?’ she inquired. Her voice suggested that, little though it would fetch, the thought of selling it might easily have occurred to such a man as Mr. Blandfoot.

‘Oh no,’ said he, ‘we are inseparable.’

‘But if its value goes up, wouldn’t you consider parting with it then?’

‘I hope,’ he answered rather gravely, ‘I shan’t have to part with it for many years,’ He came down the steps, but so tall was he that Mrs. Pepperthwaite, whose grasp of facts was feeble and at the mercy of her imagination, could scarcely believe he was not still aloft. With various shades of ungraciousness they accepted his thanks for their kind offices, but something in his manner made them unwilling to show their disappointment openly. As they stood on the doorstep Mrs. Peets made a last appeal:

‘So you won’t show us the picture after all?’

For a moment he looked as though he might really oblige them, and all their curiosity flooded back.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said suddenly. I’ll show it to Mrs. Marling.’

He smiled down into their bewildered faces; and as he shut the door, they could still see, though his face was turned away, the smile lingering on his large, spare, yellowish cheek.

‘I know the word to describe that man,’ exclaimed Mrs. Stornway, who had just learned it and used it more often than the occasion warranted. ‘He’s sinister!’

Directly she reached home she telephoned to Mrs. Marling. Mrs. Marling, it was well known, resented the telephone as an intrusion upon private life: she was as inaccessible to it as to all other demands on her attention. But finally she came.