And so the next day, waiting until a pelting shower had merged gradually into a faint mist, the two took a quick-step run about the parade ground. They came back splashed with mud and dripping wet, but their cheeks glowed and their hearts beat quickly. After that, no matter how violent the downpour, they managed to take a turn in the open. Sometimes they circled the grounds repeatedly. Again, if the rain proved too drenching, one short run was all they could achieve.
At the end of a week of such heroic exercising Monet said, significantly:
"You see how well I am standing this! Every day toughens us up… We ought to be leaving soon."
"After Christmas," Fred conceded, briefly.
There followed a brief respite of clear, crisp days, warming to mellowness at noon. After the midday meal everyone crawled out into the sunlight, standing in little shivering groups, while Monet played upon his violin. The cracked inventor, pulling his cardboard box on its ridiculous spools, stopped to listen; Weeping Willow forgot his grief and almost achieved a smile. Only the Emperor of Japan continued his pacing back and forth, his royal gloom untouched by any responsive chord.
But the reaction from this sedative of music was in every case violent. The remainder of the afternoon passed in tragic unquiet. One day Harrison called Fred aside. The assistant superintendent was daily yielding more and more to Fred's judgment.
"What do you think about a Christmas tree for Ward Six?"
For a moment Fred was uncertain. He knew the poignance of disturbing memories. But, in the end, he felt that perhaps the floodgate of grief had best be lifted. He knew by this time the cleansing solace of tears.
"We've never done it before," Harrison went on.
"There has been a prejudice against bringing old days back too clearly to these wretches… But Monet's been playing his music and they seem to like that."
It ended by Fred going out with Monet and one of the attendants into the hills and bringing back a beautiful fir tree. They set it up in a corner of the dining room and its bruised fragrance filled the entire building… There followed the problem of its trimming. At first some one suggested that it was more beautiful untricked with gauds, but to Fred, unlighted by any human touch its loveliness seemed too cold and impersonal and cruelly pagan. Presently the long afternoons were rilled with a pathetic bustle. Everyone became interested. They popped corn and strung it in snow-white garlands and some one from the kitchen sent in a bowl of cranberries which were woven into a blood-red necklace for the central branches. Harrison brought round a sack of walnuts and some liquid gilt and two brushes. Men began to quarrel good-naturedly for a chance at the gilding. A woman attendant, hearing about the tree, rode, herself, into the village and bought candles… Finally it was finished, and it stood in the early twilight of a dripping Christmas Eve, a fantastic captive from the hills, suffering its severe dignity to be melted in a cheap, but human, splendor… They had a late dinner by way of marking the event, and the usual turn of keys in the locks at seven o'clock was missing. At the close of the meal as they were bringing on plum pudding Fred rose from his place to light the candles… A little tremor ran through the room; Monet started to play… He played all the heartbreaking melodies—"Noël" and "Nazareth" and "Adeste Fideles." Slowly the tears began to trickle, but they fell silently, welling up from mysterious reaches too deep for shallow murmurings. Suddenly a thin, quavering voice started a song.
"God rest you, merry gentlemen!"
The first line rang out in all its tremulous bravery.
"Merrygentlemen!" flashed through Fred's mind. "What mockery!"
But a swelling chorus took it up and in the next instant they were men again. They sang it all—every word to the last line … repeating each stanza after the little man who had begun it and who had risen and taken his place beside Monet.
"Now to the Lord sing praises,All you within this place,And with true love and brotherhoodEach other now embrace,This holy tide of ChristmasAll other doth deface."
Only Fred remained silent. He could not sing, the bravery of it all smote him too deeply.
"This holy tide of ChristmasAll other doth deface."
They were singing the last words over again.
Fred Starratt bowed his head. For the first and only time in his life he felt Christ very near. But the Presence passed as quickly. When he looked up the singing had ceased and the candles upon the tree were guttering to a pallid end. Monet laid down his violin and blew out the dying flames; his face was ashen and as he grasped the branches of the tree his hand shook. A man in front rose to his feet. Flockwise the others followed his lead. Christmas was over!… Fred Starratt had a sense that it had died still-born.
The next morning came wrapped in a dreadful silence. Men stood about in huddling groups and whispered. The exaltation of the night before had been too violent. A great dreariness oppressed Fred Starratt. He felt the inevitable sadness of a man who had met unveiled Beauty face to face and as speedily found the vision dissolved. The tree still swept the rooms and corridors with its fragrance, but in the harsh daylight its cheap trappings gave it a wanton look. Somehow, it mocked him, filled him with a sense of the vanity of life and all its fleeting impressions. The rain came down in a tremulous flood, investing everything with its colorless tears. The trees, the buildings, the very earth itself seemed to be melting away in silvery-gray grief.
Just before noon it lightened up a trifle and the rain stopped.
"Let's get out of this!" Monet said, sweeping the frozen assembly in the smoking room with an almost scornful glance.
They found their hats and without further ado they started on a swing about the grounds. It grew lighter and lighter … it seemed for a moment as if the sun would presently peep out from the clouds. They achieved the full length of the parade ground and stopped, panting for breath. Fred wiped his forehead with a huge handkerchief.
"Shall we keep going?" he asked.
Monet nodded. They swung into a wolfish trot again, across a stretch of green turf, avoiding the clogging mud of the beaten trails. They said nothing. Presently their rhythmic flight settled down to a pleasurable monotony. They lost all sense of time and space.
Gradually their speed slackened, and they were conscious that they were winding up … up… It was Monet who halted first. They were on a flat surface again, coming out of a thicket suddenly. There was a level sweep of ground, ending abruptly in space.
"We're on Squaw Rock!" Fred Starratt exclaimed.
The two went forward to the edge of a precipice. The embryo plain leaped violently down a sheer three hundred feet directly into the lap of a foaming river pool. Fred peered over.
"There's the usual Indian legend, isn't there," he asked Monet, "connected with this place?"
Monet moved back with a little shudder. "Yes … I believe there is… The inevitable lovelorn maiden and the leap to death… Well, it's a good plunging place."
They both fell back a trifle, letting their gaze sweep the landscape below, which was unfolding in theatrical unreality. At that moment the sun came out, flooding the countryside with a flash of truant splendor. To the south nestled the cluster of hospital buildings, each sending out thin gray lines of smoke. Moving up the valley, hugging the sinuous banks of the river, a train nosed its impudent way.
"When shall we be leaving for good?" Monet asked, suddenly.
Fred let out a deep breath. "The first time it really clears!"
Monet rested his hand upon Fred's shoulder. "If we go east we'll have to cross the river."
"We'll follow the railroad track north for a mile or two. There's a crossing near Pritchard's. I saw it on the day we went after the tree."
The train pulled into the station and was whistling on its way again. The hospital automobile swung toward the grounds. Suddenly the sun was snuffed out again; it grew dark and lowering.
"We had better be on our way," Fred said, warningly. "It's going to pour in less than no time."
For a moment a silence fell between them, succeeded by an outburst from Monet.
"Let's keep on!" he cried, harshly. "Let's keep right on going! I don't want to go back. I won't, I tell you! I won't!"
Fred took him by the shoulders … he was trembling violently. "Come … come! We can't do that, you know!… We haven't provisions or proper clothing. And the rain, my boy! We'd die of exposure … or … worse!"
"I don't care!" Monet flung out, passionately. "I'm not afraid to die … not in the open."
"And you haven't your violin," Fred put in, gently.
"I never want to play again—after last night. … It was horrible … horrible… 'God rest you, merry gentlemen!' What could have possessed them?"
"Come, now!… You'll feel better to-morrow… And I promise you on the first clear day we'll make it… The first morning we wake up and find a cloudless sky."
Fred moved forward, urging Monet to follow. The youth gave a little shiver and suffered Fred's guidance.
"If I go back now," he said, sadly, "it will be forever. I shall never leave."
Fred turned about and gave him a slight shake. "Nonsense! Last night made you morbid. Harrison ought to have known better. This is no place for Christmas! One day should be always like another."
Monet shook his head. "While they were sing … something passed … I can't describe it. But I grew cold all over … I knew at once that… Oh, well! what's the use? You do not understand!"
He flung his hands up in a gesture of despair.
Fred looked up at the sky. It had grown ominously black. "We'd better speed up," he said, significantly.
Monet squared himself doggedly. "You run if you want to… It doesn't matter to me one way or another … I feel tired."
The rain began to fall in great garrulous drops. Fred took Monet's sleeve between his fingers; slowly they retraced their steps. For a few yards the youth surrendered passively, but as Fred neared the thicket again he felt the sharp release of Monet's coat sleeve. He continued on his way… Suddenly he heard a noise of swift feet stirring up the rain-soaked leaves. He turned abruptly. Monet was running in the other direction—toward the precipice. A dreadful chill swept him. He tried to call, to run, but a great weakness transfixed him. The startled air made a foolish whistling sound. Monet's figure flew on in silence, gave a quick leaping movement, and was lost!
Fred Starratt crawled back toward the precipice. The rain descended in torrents and a wind rose to meet its violence. He looked down. The pool below was churning to whitecapped fury, releasing a flood of greedy and ferocious gurglings. Gradually a bitter silence fell and a gloom gathered. Everything went black as midnight…
He felt a cold blast playing through his hair. Instinctively he put his hand to his head. His hat was gone.
Suddenly it came to him that he would have to go back to Fairview …alone.
He rose to his feet. "North … a mile or two!" he muttered. "If I can once cross the bridge!"
On a certain evening in February Fred Starratt, from the upper deck of a ferryboat, again saw the dusky outlines of San Francisco stretch themselves in faint allurement pricked with glittering splendor. It was a mild night—the skies clear, the air tinged with pleasant chill, the bay stilled to nocturnal quiet.
He had come out upon the upper deck to be alone. He wanted to approach the city of his birth in decent solitude, to feel the thrill of home-coming in all its poignant melancholy. He had expected the event to assume a special significance, to be fraught with hidden meaning, to set his pulses leaping. But he had to confess that neither the beauty of the night nor the uncommon quality of the event moved him. Had he been wrung dry of all emotional reaction? It was not until a woman came from the stuffy cabin and took a seat in a sheltered corner outside that he had the slightest realization of the nearness of his old environment. As she passed close to his pacing form a sickly sweet odor enveloped him. He looked after her retreating figure. She was carrying a yellow armful of blossoming acacia. The perfume evoked a sad memory of virginal springs innumerable … springs that seemed to go back wistfully beyond his own existence … springs long dead and never to be revived. Dead? No, perhaps not quite that, but springs never to be again his portion. This perfume of the blossoming acacia … how in the old days it had always brought home a sense of awakening, a sense of renewal to a land burned and seared and ravished in the hot and tearless passion of summer! Following the first rains would come the faint flush of green upon the hillsides, growing a little deeper as the healing floods released themselves, and then, one day, suddenly, almost overnight, the acacia would bend beneath a yellow burden, sending a swooning fragrance out to match the yellow sunlight of February. From that moment on the pageant was continuous, bud and blossom and virginal leaf succeeding one another in showering abundance. But nothing that followed quite matched the heavy beauty of these first golden boughs, nothing that could evoke quite the same infinite yearning for hidden and heroic destinies. He defined the spell of the perfume again, but he did not feel it. It shook his memory to its foundations, but it left his senses cold. And the city before him was as sharply revealed and as cruelly unmoving.
Suddenly he was done with a desire for solitude and he went below. A half score of men were idling upon the lower deck. He began his restless pacings again, stroking his faded beard with a strangely white hand. Finally he stopped, gazing wistfully at the dark beauty of the ferry tower, sending its winsome shaft up into the quivering night. A man at his elbow began to speak in the characteristically Californian fashion about the weather.
"Yes," Fred assented, briefly, "itisa fine night."
"Too fine," the stranger returned. "We need rain."
"Haven't you had much down this way, either?" Fred found himself inquiring, glad of a chance to escape for the moment into the commonplace.
"At the beginning of the season it came on a bit, but since Christmas there has been scarcely a drop. How does the country look?"
Fred leaned against a water barrel and continued to stroke his beard.
"Pretty well burned up. But the fruit trees will soon be blossoming in spite of everything… The worst of it is there isn't any snow in the mountains."
"Ah, then you've been up into the Sierras."
"Yes, since December… I had to make my way through the northern passes just after Christmas. Folks told me it couldn't be done… I guess it would have been almost impossible in a wet season. But things were the same way up north. No end of rain in the fall and none to speak of since the holidays. But at that I've been through some tough times… How are things in town?"
The stranger unbuttoned his shabby overcoat and took out a bag of tobacco. His indifferent suit and thick blue-flannel shirt, which ordinarily would have stamped him as an artisan, was belied by the quality of his speech.
"Things are rotten. Everybody is striking. You can't get work anywhere except you want to scab… You'd better have stayed where you came from."
There was a tentative quality in this observation that roused in Fred a vague speculation. He had a feeling that the stranger was leading up cautiously to some subject. He looked again, this time sharply, at his companion of the moment. There was nothing extraordinary in the face except the eyes burning fitfully under the gloom of incredibly thick, coarse, reddish eyebrows. His mouth was a curious mixture of softness and cruelty, and his hands were broad, but not ungraceful.
"Well, if a man is starving he'll do almost anything, I guess," Fred returned, significantly.
"Do you mean thatyouwould—if you were starving?"
"I'm starving now!" escaped Fred Starratt, almost involuntarily.
"I thought so," said the other, quietly.
"Why?"
"I've seen plenty of starving men in my day. I know the look. And you're suffering in the bargain. Not physically. But you've been through a hell of some kind. Am I right?"
"Yes … you're quite right."
The boat was swinging into the slip. Already a crowd was moving down upon them.
"That's why I spoke to you. A man who's been through hell is like a field freshly broken to the plow. He's ready for seed."
Fred cast an ironical glance at the man before him. "And you, I suppose, are the sower," he said, mockingly. "A parson?"
The other laughed, disclosing greenish teeth. "Of a sort… Perhaps high priest would be nearer the truth. There's a certain purposeful cruelty about that term which appeals to me. I'm a bit of a fanatic, you know… But I like to get my recruits when they're bleeding raw. I like them when the salt of truth can sting deep… Wounds heal so quickly … so disgustingly quickly."
He spat contemptuously and began to cram a blackened pipe to overflowing. The boat had landed and already the crowd was moving up the apron. Fred and his companion felt themselves urged forward by the pressure of this human tide.
"Come and have some coffee with me," Fred heard the man at his side say in a half-commanding tone. "My name is Storch. What shall I call you?"
"Anything you like!" Fred snapped, viciously.
The other laughed. "You're in capital form! Upon my word we'll get on famously together." And he spat again, this time with satisfaction and rare good humor.
Fred Starratt looked up. They had emerged suddenly from the uncertain twilight of a stone-flanked corridor into a harsh blue-white flood of electricity. A confused babble of noises fell upon his ears. He put out his hand instinctively and clutched the arm of the man at his side.
"Yes … yes…" the voice of his companion broke in, reassuringly. "You're all right. In a moment … after you've had coffee things will…"
He clutched again and presently, like a drowning man borne upon the waves by a superior force, he felt himself guided through a maze of confusing details, into swift and certain safety.
* * * * *
The coffee house into which Fred Starratt had been led by Storch was choked with men and the thick odor of coffee and fried ham. To a man who had eaten sparingly for days the smell of food was nauseating. Storch ordered coffee for himself and a bowl of soup for Fred. This last was a good choice in spite of the fact that for a moment Fred felt instinctive rebellion. These pale, watery messes were too suggestive of Fairview. But in the end the warm fluid dissipated his weakness and he began to experience a normal hunger.
Storch finished his cup of coffee and wiped a dark-brown ooze from his upper lip with a paper napkin.
"Better take a slice of bread or two," he advised Fred, "and then call it quits. You'll feel better in the long run. A starved stomach shouldn't be surprised with too much food."
Fred obeyed. He could see that this man understood many things.
Gradually the crowd thinned. Soon only Fred and Storch were left at the particular table that they had chosen. Stragglers came and went, but still Storch made no move to go, and Fred was equally inactive. He felt warm and comfortably drowsy and, on the whole, quite content. The waiter cleared away the empty dishes and then discreetly ignored them. Fred fell to studying his reflection in the polished mirror running the length of the room. He had to acknowledge that he looked savage, with his hair long and untidy and a bristling, sunburnt beard smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of the flesh and stood apart, watching… He was recalled by Storch's voice. He shuddered slightly and turned his face toward his questioner.
"I didn't hear what you said," escaped him.
Storch leaned forward. "I was asking what you were doing … up north in the mountains during December. Only a desperate man or a fool would take a chance like that… And I can see you're not a fool… There aren't any prisons up that way that I know of."
"Prisons! What do you mean?"
"You've escaped from somewhere."
"How do you know?"
"You're still furtive in spite of your pretended calm. I know the look. I know the feeling. I've seen scores of men who have been through the mill. I've been through the mill myself. Not once, but several times. I've been in nearly every jail in the country worth putting up at… Even the Federal prisons haven't been proof against me. I've beat them all. It's a game I like to play. Just as one man plunges into stocks, or another breaks strikes, or another leads a howling mob to victory… Every man has his game. What's yours?"
Fred shrugged. "Why are you telling me all this?" he countered. "You don't know me."
Storch laughed, showing his greenish teeth again. "What difference does that make?… I'm a pretty good judge of character, and I think I've got you right. You might play a rough game, but it would be square—according to your standards… I question most standards, but that is neither here nor there. They shackle some people extraordinarily. Just now you're drifting about without any. But you'll tie to some sort of anchor pretty soon… That's why you interest me. I want to get you while you're still drifting."
Fred felt a sudden chill. He was suspicious of this ironically genial man opposite him who bought him food and then prodded for his secret. There was something diabolical about the way he calmly admitted an impersonal but curiously definite interest.
"What is your business, anyway?" Fred shot out, suddenly.
"I'm a fisher for men," he replied, cryptically. "Some people build up … others destroy. There must be always those who clear the ground—the wreckers, in other words… There's too much attention paid to building. Folks are in such a hurry they go about rearing all kinds of crazy structures on rotten foundations… I'm looking for some human dynamite to make a good job."
Fred drew back. "You've got me wrong," he said. "I'm not a radical."
"Not yet, of course. Your kind take a lot of punishment before they see the light. But you're a good prospect—a damned good prospect. You're a good deal like a young fellow I met last fall when I was working over in the shipyards in Oakland. He—"
"Shipyards?" interrupted Fred. "Not Hilmer's shipyards, by any chance?"
Storch leaned forward, drawing his shaggy eyebrows together. "Why?"
"I know Hilmer, that's all."
Storch continued his searching scrutiny. Fred felt uneasy—it seemed as if this man opposite him was drawing the innermost secret of his soul to the surface. Finally Storch rubbed his hands together with an air of satisfaction as he said:
"So you know Hilmer!… That makes you all the more interesting… Well, well, let's be moving. I'll put you up for the night. I've got a shelter, such as it is."
Fred rose. He had an impulse to refuse. There was something uncanny about the power of Storch. He was at once fascinating and repulsive. But, on second thought, any shelter was better than a night spent on the streets. He had had two months of buffeting and he was ready for even an indifferent comfort.
He ended by going with his new-found friend. They trotted south along the Embarcadero, hugging the shadows close. This street, once noisy with a coarse, guzzling gayety, was silent. A few disconsolate men hung about the emasculated bars trying to rouse their sluggish spirits on colicky draughts of near beer and grape juice, but the effect was dismal and forbidding. Fred felt a great depression overwhelm him.
He had grown accustomed to the silence of the open spaces, but this silence of the city had a portentous quality which frightened him. It reminded him of that ominous quiet that had settled down on Fairview after that heartbreaking celebration on Christmas Eve. What were men doing with their idle moments? How were they escaping from the drab to-day? Did the crowded lobbies of the sailors' lodging houses spell the final word in the bleak entertainment that intolerance had left them? Upon one of the street corners a Salvation Army lassie harangued an indifferent handful. But there seemed nothing now from which to save these men except monotony, and religion of the fife-and-drum order was offering only a very dreary escape. Did the moral values of negative virtue make men any more admirable? he found himself wondering.
Storch led the way in silence. Finally they turned up toward the slopes of Rincon Hill. A cluster of shacks, clinging crazily to the tawny banks, loomed ahead in the darkness. Storch clambered along a beaten trail and presently he leaped toward the broader confines of a street which opened its arms abruptly to receive them. Fred followed. The thoroughfare upon which he found himself standing was little more than a lane, hedged on either side by crazy structures that nearly all had sprung to rambling life from one-roomed refugee shacks which had dotted the city after the fire and earthquake. Most of them were vine clad and brightened with beds of scarlet geraniums, but the house before which Storch halted rose uncompromisingly from the sun-baked ground without the charity of a covering. Storch turned the key and threw the door open, motioning Fred to enter. Fred did as he was bidden and found himself in a cluttered room, showing harshly in the light streaming in from a near-by street lamp. The air was foul with stale tobacco, refuse, and imprisoned odors of innumerable greasy meals and the sweaty apparel of men who work with their hands.
Storch lighted a lamp. A tumble-down couch stood against the wall, and in an opposite corner a heap of tattered quilts had been flung disdainfully. Tables and chairs and even the floor were piled with papers and cheaply covered books and tattered magazines.
Storch pointed to the couch. "You sleep there to-night. I'll roll up on the floor."
It never occurred to Fred to protest. The two began to shed their outer garments. Fred crawled in between the musty quilts. Storch blew out the lamp, and Fred saw him move toward the quilts in the corner. Without bothering to straighten them out he flung himself down and pulled a covering over him. The light from the street lamp continued to flood the room. Presently Fred heard Storch chuckling.
"So you know Hilmer!" he was repeating again, making a sound of satisfaction, as one does over a succulent morsel. "Well … well … fancy how things turn out!"
Fred made no reply, and after a time a gentle snoring told that Storch had fallen asleep.
Fred tossed about, oppressed by the close air. But, in the end, even he fell into a series of fitful dozes. He dreamed the room in which he was sleeping was suddenly transformed into a huge spider web from which there was no escape. And he caught glimpses of Storch himself hanging spider-wise from a gossamer thread, spinning dizzily in midair… He awoke repeatedly, returning as often to the same dream. Toward morning he heard a faint stirring about. But he lay huddled in a pretense of sleep… Finally the door banged and he knew that Storch had left… He let out a profound sigh and turned his face from the light…
When Fred Starratt awoke a noonday sun was flooding in at the single window. Consciousness brought no confusion … he was beginning to grow accustomed to sudden shifts in fortune and strange environments had long since ceased to be a waking novelty. Outside he could hear the genial noises of a thickly populated lane—shrilly cried bits of neighborhood gossip bandied from doorstep to doorstep … the laughter of children … the call of a junkman … even a smothered cackling from some captive hen fulfilling its joyful function in spite of restraint. He did not rise at once, but he lay there thinking, trying to force the realization that he was again in San Francisco… He wondered dimly at the power of the homing instinct that had driven him back. It was plain to him now that almost any other environment would have been materially better. He had had the whole state of California to choose from, indeed he might have flown even farther afield. But from the very beginning his feet had turned homeward with uncanny precision. On those first days and nights when he had lain huddled in any uncertain shelter that came to hand the one thought that had goaded him on was the promise of this return.
And those first hours of freedom had been at once the sweetest and the bitterest. Wet to the skin, starved, furtive, like a lean, dog-harried coyote he had achieved the mountains and safety more dead than alive. Looking back, he could see that only the sheerest madness had tempted him to flight in the first place. Without an ounce of provisions, without blankets, at the start lacking even a hat, he had defied the elements and won. God was indeed tender with all fools and madmen!
He knew now that under ordinary circumstances he must have perished in the mountain passes. But the weather had been warm there all during December and more rain than snow had fallen, keeping the beaten paths reasonably open… He had thought always of these snow-pent places as quite devoid of any life at the winter season, and he was amazed to find how many human beings burrowed in and hibernated during the storm-bound months. Elsewhere, the skulking traveler received a chary welcome, but in the silent fastness of the hills latchstring and hearthstone and tobacco store were for genial sharing. In almost any one of these log shelters that he chanced upon he might have settled himself in content and found an indefinite welcome, but the urge to be up and on sent him forward to the next rude threshold. Thus mountain cabin succeeded mountain cabin until, presently, one day Fred Starratt found himself swinging down to the plains again—to the broad-bosomed valleys lying parched and expectant under the cruel spell of drought. Now people regarded him suspiciously, dogs snapped at his heels, and farmers' women thrust him doles of food through half-opened kitchen doors. Here and there he picked up a stray job or two. But he was plainly inefficient for most tasks assigned him… In the small towns there were not enough jobs to go round … young men were returning from overseas and dislodging the incompetents who had achieved prosperity because of the labor shortage. The inland cities were in the grip of strikes … there were plenty of jobs, but few with the temerity to attempt to fill them. And, besides, what had Fred Starratt to offer in the way either of skill or brawn?… He grew to know the meaning of impotence. No, he was a creature of the paved streets, and to the paved streets he returned as swiftly as his feet and his indifferent fortune could carry him. Besides, he had grown hungry for familiar sights and faces, and perhaps, down deep, curiosity had been the mainspring of his return. Even bitter ties have a pull that cannot always be denied. At Fairview the presence of Monet had held him almost a willing captive. There was something about the flame burning in that almost frail body that had lighted even the ugliness of Fairview with a strange beauty. He could not think of him as dead. That last moment had been too tinged with the haunting poetry of life. How often he had reconstructed that scene—the gray, sullen rain pattering on the spent leaves, the quick-rushing sound of a body in flight, the sudden leap of a soul toward greater freedom! And then the vision of the churning pool below closing in triumphantly as it might have done upon some reclaimed pagan creature that had tasted the bitter wine of exile and returned in leaping joy to its chosen element! It was not the shock and sadness of death that had sent Fred Starratt for a moment stark mad into the storm and freedom, but rather an ecstasy of loneliness … a yearning to match daring with daring.
And now he was home again, in his own gray-green city, lying beneath tattered quilts in a hovel, with the selfsame February sun that had once pricked him to a spiritual adventure flooding in upon him! He rose and threw open the door. The soft noontide air floated in, displacing the fetid atmosphere. He looked about the room searchingly. In the daylight it seemed even more unkempt, but less forbidding. A two-burner kerosene stove stood upon an empty box just under the window. On another upturned box at its side lay a few odds and ends of cooking utensils, shriveling bits of food, a plate or two. He found a loaf of dry bread and cut a slice from it. This, together with a glass of water, completed his breakfast.
He tried to brush his weather-beaten clothes into decency with a stump of a whisk broom and to wipe the dust of the highroad from his almost spent shoes. But, somehow, these feeble attempts at gentility seemed to increase his forlorn appearance.
He went over and straightened out the bedcoverings. At least he would leave the couch in some semblance of order. What did Storch expect him to do? Come back again for shelter? He had no plans, but as he went out, banging the door, he felt no wish to return.
His first thought now was to see Ginger. He went to the Turk Street address. He found a huge frame mansion of the 'eighties converted into cheap lodgings. The landlady, wearing large jet and gold ornaments, eyed him suspiciously. Miss Molineaux no longer lived there. Her present address? She had left none. Thus dismissed, he turned his steps toward the Hilmers'.
He had expected to come upon the vision of his wife wheeling Mrs. Hilmer up and down the sidewalk, and yet, when these expectations were realized, he experienced a shock. There she was, Helen Starratt, in a black dress and a black hat, pacing with drab patience the full length of the block and back again. He could not get a good view of her face because her hat shaded her eyes. Mrs. Hilmer's figure, equally indistinct, was a shapeless mass of humanity. A child, coming out of a nearby house with a pair of roller skates in her hand, stood off and answered his questions, at first reluctantly, but finally with the importance of encouraged childhood… Who was the lady in the wheeled chair? Mrs. Hilmer. And the other one in black? Her name was Starratt. No, she didn't know her very well. But people said she was very sad. She dressed in black and looked unhappy. Why? Because her husband was dead. No, there was no mistake—she had heard her mother say so many times—Mrs. Starratt's husband was dead, quite dead!…
He turned back toward town.Dead, quite dead! Well, the child had reckoned better than she knew!
He retraced his steps slowly, resting upon many hospitable doorsteps that afternoon. The noise of the city confused him, the stone pavements hurt his ankles, he was hungry and faint. He did not know what to do or where to go. Only one shelter lay open to him. Should he go back to Storch?
Finally, toward five o'clock, he found himself standing upon the corner of California and Montgomery streets, watching the tide of office workers flooding homeward. A truant animation was flaming them briefly. Familiar face after familiar face passed, lighted with the joy of sudden release from servitude. Fred Starratt was curiously unmoved. He had fancied that he would feel a great yearning toward all this well-ordered sanity. He had fancied that he would be overwhelmed with memories, with regrets, with futile tears. But he knew now that even if it were possible to re-enter the world in which he had once moved he would refuse scornfully. Was it always so with those who achieved death? Ah yes, death was the great progression, one never re-entered the circle of life one quitted. Dead, quite dead! Or, as Storch put it, "A field freshly broken to the plow!" A field awaiting the eternal upspringing and the inevitable harvest… And so on, again and again, to the end of time!
He came out of his musings with a renewed sense of faintness and the realization that the street was rapidly being emptied of its throng. A few stragglers hurried toward the ferry. He roused himself. A green-gold light was enlivening the west and giving a ghostly unreality to the street lamps twinkling in a premature blossoming.
He was turning to go when he saw a familiar figure coming up the street. He looked twice to assure himself that he was not mistaken. It was Brauer!
He stood a moment longer, roused to indifferent curiosity, but, as Brauer brushed close, a sudden malevolent hatred shook him. He squared himself and said in a hoarse tone:
"I'm starving… I want money … to eat!" Brauer turned a face of amazed and insolent incredulity toward Fred.
"Well, you won't get it from me!" he flung back.
Fred Starratt grasped Brauer's puny wrist in a ferocious grip.
"Oh yes, I will… Do you know who I am?"
"You? … No… Let me go; you're hurting me!"
"Look at me closely!"
"I tell you I don't know you. Are you crazy?"
"Perhaps… I've been in an insane asylum… Now do you know who I am?"
Brauer fell back. "No," he breathed: "it can't be possible! FredStarratt is dead."
Fred began to laugh. "You're right. But I want something to eat just the same. You're going to take me into Hjul's … and buy me a meal. … And after I've eaten perhaps you'll hear how I died and who killed me."
He could feel Brauer trembling in his grasp. A rising cruelty overwhelmed him. He flung Brauer from him with a gesture of contempt.
"Are we going to eat?" he asked, coldly.
"Yes … whatever you say."
Fred nodded and together the two drifted down Montgomery Street.
Sitting over a generous platter of pot roast and spaghetti at Hjul's, with Brauer's pallid face staring up at him, Fred Starratt had the realization that there was at least one mouselike human to whom he could play the role of cat.
Brauer did not need to be prodded to speech. He told everything with the eagerness of a child caught in a fault and seeking to curry the favor of his questioner. He and Kendricks were placing all the Hilmer insurance. Yes, they were rebating—that went without saying. And what else lay at the bottom of Hilmer's generosity? Fred Starratt put the question insinuatingly. Ah yes, the little matter of standing by when Starratt had been sent to Fairview. No, Hilmer had made no demand, but he had advised Brauer to be firm—through his lawyer, of course … a hint, nothing more—that some sort of example should be made of men who… Yes, that was just as it had happened.
"And you knew where they were sending me?" Fred was moved to demand, harshly.
"Well … yes… But Hilmer's lawyer put it so convincingly…Everything was to be for the best."
"Including your share in the Hilmer business?"
Brauer had the grace to wince. "Well, there was nothing said absolutely."
"And what did you figure was Hilmer's reason for … well, wanting me to summer at Fairview?"
Brauer toyed with a spoon. "There could only be one reason."
"Don't be afraid. You mean that my wife…"
"Yes … just that!"
Fred Starratt had a sense that he should have been stirred to anger, but instead a great pity swept him, pity for a human being who could sell another so shamelessly and not have the grace to deny it. Yes, he realized now that there were times when a lie was the most self-respecting and admirable thing in the world.
"It appears that I am dead also. I saw my wife to-day mourning for me in the most respectable of weeds."
"Your hat, you see—it was found in the water … not far from the dead body of your friend… Naturally…"
"Yes, naturally, the wish was father to the thought. Just so!"
And with that Fred Starratt laughed so unpleasantly that Brauer shivered and his face reddened.
By this time Fred Starratt had finished eating. Brauer paid the check and the two departed. At the first street corner Brauer attempted to slip a five-dollar bill into Starratt's hand. He refused scornfully.
"Money? I don't want your money. There is only one thing that will buy my good will—your silence. Do you understand what I mean? … I'm not the same man you tricked last July. Then I thought I had everything to lose. Now I know that no one ever loses anything… You don't understand me, do you? … Oh, well, it doesn't matter."
Brauer's frightened lips scarcely moved as he asked:
"Where are you staying?"
"Anywhere I can find a shelter… Last night I spent with an anarchist… I think he'd blow up almost anyone for just the sheer joy of it."
Brauer shuddered. "Where will you spend to-night?"
"I think I'll go back to the same place… This morning I was undecided. But I've heard a lot of things since then… I'm taking an interest in life again… By the way, the man I'm staying with knows Hilmer… And I don't think he likes him, either… I'll give you one tip, Brauer. Never get an anarchist sore at you…Theyhaven't anything to lose, either."
He had never seen such pallor as that which shook the color fromBrauer's face. He decided not to torment him further.
He had established a sense of the unfathomable for the present and future terror of his trembling little ex-partner. His revenge, so far as Brauer was concerned, was complete. He had not the slightest wish to see Brauer again.
He let his hands close once more tightly about Brauer's puny wrists.
"Remember … you have not seen me. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Not a living soul … you are not to even suggest that … otherwise … well, I am living with an anarchist, and a word to the wise …"
He turned abruptly and left his companion standing on the street corner, staring vacantly after him.
Instinctively his footsteps found their way to Storch's shack. A light was glimmering inside. Fred beat upon the door. It swung open quickly, revealing Storch's greenish teeth bared in a wide smile of satisfaction.
"Come in … come in!" Storch cried out gayly. "Have a good day?"
"Excellent!" Fred snapped back, venomously. "I learned, among other things, that I am legally dead."
Storch rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. "A clean slate! Do you realize how wonderful it is, my man, to start fresh?"
Fred threw himself into a chair. He felt tired. Sharp, darting pains were stabbing his eyes. "I think I'm going to be ill!" he said, with sudden irrelevance.
Storch lighted the oil stove. "Crawl into bed and I'll get you something hot to drink!"
Storch's tone was kind to a point of softness, and yet, later, when he bent over the couch with a steaming glass in his hand Fred experienced a sharp revulsion.
"I dreamed all last night," Fred said, almost defiantly, "that this room was a cobweb and that you were a huge spider, dangling on a thread."
"And you were the fly, I suppose," Storch replied, sneeringly.
The next instant he had touched Fred's forehead gently, almost tenderly, but his eyes glittered beneath their shaggy brows with an insane ferocity… Fred took the glass. He was too ill to care much one way or the other.
Next morning Fred Starratt knew that he was too ill to rise. Then everything became hazy. He had moments of consciousness when he sensed Storch's figure moving in a sort of mist, flashing a green smile through the gloom. He saw other figures, too—-Helen Starratt, swathed in clinging black; Hilmer, displaying his mangled thumb; Monet with eyes of gentle reproach; and Ginger, very vague and very wistful. There were times when the room seemed crowded with strange people who came and went and gesticulated, people gathering close to the dim lamp which Storch lighted at nightfall.
The visions of Monet were a curious mixture of shadow and reality. Sometimes he seemed very elusive, but, again, his face would grow clear to the point of dazzling brightness. At such moments Fred would screen his eyes and turn away, only in the end to catch a melting glimpse of Monet fading gradually with a gesture of resignation and regret. But slowly the outlines of Monet grew less and less tangible and the personality of Storch more and more shot through with warm-breathed vitality, and the strange company that gathered at dusk about the lamp became living things instead of shadows. Yet it took him some time to realize that these nightly gatherings at Storch's were composed of real flesh and blood.
At first he was content to lie in a drowse and listen to the incoherent babblings of these nocturnal visitors, but, as he grew stronger, detached bits of conversation began to impress themselves upon him. These people had each some pet grievance and it remained for Storch to pick upon the strings of their discontents with unerring accuracy. At about eight o'clock every night the first stragglers would drift in, reinforced by a steady stream, until midnight saw a room stuffed with sweating humanity releasing their emotions in a biting flood of protests. They protested at everything under the sun—at custom, at order, at work, at play, at love, at life itself. And Storch, for the most part silent, would sit with folded arms, puffing at his pipe, a suggestion of genial malice on his face, throwing out a phrase here and there that set the pack about him leaping like hungry dogs to the lure of food. In confused moments Fred Starratt fell to wondering whether he really had escaped from Fairview, whether the forms about him were not the same motley assembly that used to gather in the open and exchange whines. The wails now seemed keyed to howls of defiance, but the source was essentially the same.
Fred wondered how he lived through these dreadful evenings with the air thick to choking. Indeed, he used to wonder what had saved him from death at any stage of the game. Storch had permitted him the use of a maggoty couch, had shared scraps of indifferent food at irregular intervals, and set a cracked pitcher of water within reach. But beyond that, he had been ignored. The nightly assembly did not even cast their glances his way.
During the day Fred was left alone for the most part, and he felt a certain luxury in this personal solitude after the months at Fairview with its unescapable human contacts. He would lie there, his ears still ringing with the echoes from the nightly gathering of malcontents, trying to reconstruct his own quarrel with life. He had a feeling that he would remain a silent onlooker only until Storch decreed otherwise. If he stayed long enough the night would come when Storch would call upon him for a testimonial of hatred. He knew that deep down somewhere within him rancors were stirring to sinister life. He had experienced the first glimmerings of cruelty in that moment when he had felt Brauer tremble under his grasp. What would have been his reaction to physical fear on Helen Starratt's part? Suppose on that afternoon when he had watched her wheeling Mrs. Hilmer up and down with deceitful patience he had gone over and struck her the blow which was primitively her portion? Would the sight of her whimpering fear have stirred him to further elemental cruelties? Would he have ended by killing her? … Physically weak as he was, he could still feel the thrill of cruelty that had shaken him at the realization of Brauer's dismay. As a child, when a truant gust of deviltry had swept him, he had felt the same satisfaction in pummeling a comrade who backed away from friendly cuffs turned instantly to blows of malice. Even now he had occasionally a desire to seek out Brauer again and worry him further. He was fearing indifference. What if, after all that he had suffered at the hands of others, he should find himself in the pale clutch of an impotent indifference? He felt a certain shame back of the possibility, and at such moments the words of Storch used to ring in his ears:
"Wounds heal so quickly … so disgustingly quickly!"
And again, watching Storch at night, touching the quivering cords which might otherwise have rusted in inactive silence, he remembered further the introduction to this contemptuous phrase:
"I like to get my recruits when they're bleeding raw. I like them when the salt of truth can sting deep…"
How Storch lived Fred could only guess. But he managed always to jingle a silver coin or two and keep a crust of bread in the house. His fare was frugal to the point of being ascetic. Once or twice, as if moved by Fred's physical weakness, he brought some scraps of beef home and brewed a few cups of steaming bouillon, and again, one Sunday morning he went out and bought a half dozen eggs which he converted into an impossibly tough omelet. But for the most part he lived on coffee and fresh French bread and cheese. It was on this incredible fare that Fred Starratt won back his strength. His exhaustion was an exhaustion of the spirit, and food seemed to have little part in either his disorder or his recovery.
Whatever Storch's specific grievance with life, he never voiced it and in this he won Fred's admiration. He liked to jangle the discordant passions of others, but his own he muffled into complete silence. He had worked at almost every known calling. It seemed that he came and disappeared always as suddenly and in his wake a furrow of men harrowed to supreme unrest yielded up a harvest sown of dragon's teeth. He was an idea made flesh, patient, relentless, almost intangible. He flashed upon new horizons like a cloud from the south and he vanished as completely once he had revived hatred with his insinuating showers. He was, as he had said on that first meeting with Fred, a fanatic, a high priest. He called many, but he chose few.
One night after the others had left Fred said to him:
"Do you realize what you are doing? … You are working up these men to a frenzy. Some morning we shall wake to find murder done."
"How quickly you are learning," Storch answered, flinging his coat aside.
"Are you fair?" Fred went on, passionately. "If you have your convictions, why not risk your own hide to prove them? Why make cats'-paws of the others?"
Storch took out his pipe and lighted it deliberately. "Prospective martyrs are as plentiful as fish in a net," he answered. "Of what good is the sea's yield without fishermen? … I sacrifice myself and who takes my place? Will you?"
Fred turned on him suddenly. "You are not training me to be your successor, I hope," he said, with a slight sneer. "Because I lie here without protest is no reason that I approve. Indeed, I wonder sometimes if I do quite right to permit all this… There are authorities, you know."
Storch looked at him steadily. "The door is open, my friend."
Fred gave a little gesture of resignation.
"You know perfectly well that I'm not built to betray the man who gives me shelter."
"Oh, I'm not sheltering you for love!"
"You have some purpose, of course. I understand that. But you're wasting time."
"Well, I'll risk it… I know well enough you're not a man easily won to an abstract hatred… But a personal hatred very often serves as good a turn… Everything is grist to my mill."
"A personal hatred?" echoed Fred.
Storch blew out the light.
"You're duller than I thought," he called through the gloom.
Fred turned his face away and tried to sleep.
The next day he decided to crawl out of bed and begin to win back his strength. He couldn't lie there forever sharing Storch's roof and crust. But the effort left him exhausted and he was soon glad to fling himself back upon the couch.
Each succeeding day he felt a little stronger, until the time came when he was able to drag himself to the open door and sit in the sunshine. He had never thought much about sunshine in the old days. A fine day had been something to be remarked, but scarcely hoarded. With the steam radiator working, it had not mattered so much whether the sun shone or not… He remembered the first time that a real sense of the sun's beauty had struck him—on that morning which now seemed so remote—when he had risen weakly from his cot at the detention hospital and made ready for exile at Fairview. Less than a year ago! How many things had assumed new values since then! Now, he could exploit every sunbeam to its minutest warmth, he could wring sustenance from a handful of crumbs, he knew what a cup of cold water meant. He was on speaking terms with hunger, he had been comrade to madness, he had looked upon sudden death, he was an outcast and, in a sense, a criminal. He felt that he could almost say with Hilmer:
"I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact."
All but murder—yet it had brushed close to him. Even now he could evoke the choking rage that had engulfed him on that night of his arrest when his defenseless cheek had reddened to the blow of humiliation. This had been, however, a flash of passion. But once, meeting a man who blocked his path in the first upper reaches of the hills, beyond Fairview, he had felt the even more primitive itch of self-preservation urging him to the ultimate crime. Would he end by going a step farther and planning the destruction of life in cold blood?
It was curious how constant association with a sensational idea dulled the edge of its novelty. The first time he had heard deliberate and passionless murder all but plotted in Storch's huddled room he had felt a quick heartbeat of instinctive protest. Had he been stronger at that moment he would have leaped to his feet in opposition. But the moment passed and when he heard the subject broached again he listened curiously. Finally he ceased to feel the slightest tremor of revolt. Was indifference always the first step toward surrender?
Finally Fred grew strong enough to desert his couch at evening. Up to this point he had been ignored by the nightly visitors, but now they made a place for him in the circle about the sputtering lamp. It seemed, also, that, with his active presence, the talk began to assume general point and direction. Storch had been giving them plenty of tether, but now he was beginning to pull up sharply, putting their windy theories to the test. They were for clearing the ground, were they? Well, so far so good. But generalities led nowhere. Why not something specific? Wasn't the time ripe for action—thousands of men, walking the streets, locked out because they dared to demand a decent and even break? And this in the face of all the altruistic rumble-bumble which war had evoked? He played this theme over and over again, and finally one night with an almost casual air he said:
"Take the shipyards, for instance … forty-odd thousand men locked out while the owners lay plans to shackle them further. Now is the chance. Quit talking and get busy!"
It ended in a list being made of the chief offenders—owners, managers, irascible foremen. Fred Starratt listened like a man in a dream. When Hilmer was named he found himself shivering. These people were plotting murder now—cool, calm, passionless murder! There was something fascinating in the very nonchalance of it.
Storch's eyes glittered more and more savagely. He drew up plans, arranged incredible details, delivered specific offenders into the hands of certain of his henchmen.
"You are responsible for this man, now," he used to fling at the chosen one. "How or where or when does not interest me—but get him, you understand,get him!"
One night a member said, significantly:
"Everybody's been picked but Hilmer… What's the matter, Storch, are you saving that plum for yourself?"
Storch rubbed his hands together, flashing a look at Fred.
"No… There's an option on Hilmer!" he cried, gleefully.
Fred tried to ignore the implication, but all night the suggestion burned itself into his brain. So some one was to get Hilmer, after all! Well, why not? Hilmer liked men with guts enough to fight—rabbit drives were not to his taste… Among all the names brought up and discussed at these sinister gatherings about Storch's round table Hilmer's stood out as the ultimate prize. No one spoke a good word for him and yet Fred had to admit that the revilings were flavored with a certain grudging respect. He was an open and consistent tyrant, at any rate.
An option on Hilmer! What a trick Storch had for illuminating phrases! … And his divinations were uncanny. Why should he assume that Hilmer was in any way bound up in Fred Starratt's life?
The next morning Fred decided to chance a walk in the open. He had a vague wish to try his wings again, now that he had grown stronger. The situation reminded him remotely of Fairview on those first days when Monet and he had attempted to harden their muscles against the day of escape. But this time he was struggling to free himself from a personality, from an idea. He must leave Storch and his motley brood as soon as possible; somehow the acid of their ruthless philosophy was eating away the remnants of any inner beauty which had been left him. At first he had been all revolt, but now there were swift moments in which he asked himself what quarrel he could have with any blows struck at authority. What had established order done for him? Acted as a screen for villainy and inconstancy for the most part.
He turned all this over in his mind as he slunk furtively along the water front, trying vaguely to shape a plan of action. He felt himself to be a very unusual and almost terrible figure, and yet no one paid any heed to him. His beard had lost its sunburned character and grown jet black, his face, and particularly his hands, were pale to transparence, his eyes burned too brightly in their sunken sockets. He was not even a ghost of his former self, but rather a sinister reincarnation. He felt that he was even more forbidding than on that night when he had sent Brauer shivering from his presence. He doubted whether Brauer would recognize him again, so subtle and marked was the change. He hardly recognized himself, and the transformation was not solely a matter of physical degeneration. No, there was something indefinable in the quality of his decline.
He fluttered about the town, at first aimlessly, like a defenseless fledgling thrust before its time from the nest. He was weak and tremulous and utterly miserable. Yet he felt compelled to go forward. He must escape from Storch!He must!
The docks, usually full of bustle, were silent and almost deserted. Fred questioned a man loafing upon a pile of lumber. It appeared that a strike of stevedores was the cause of this outward sign of inactivity. Boats were being loaded quietly, but the process was furtive and sullen. Occasionally, out of the wide expanse of brooding indolence a knot of men would gather flockwise, and melt as quickly. There was an ominous quality in the swiftness with which these cloudlike groups congealed and disintegrated. The sinister blight of repression was over everything—repressed desires, repressed joys, repressed hatreds. It was almost as sad as the noonday silence of Fairview.
Fred slunk along in deep dejection. He wanted the color and life and bustle of accomplishment. A slight activity before one of the docks beguiled him from his depression. A passenger steamer was preparing for its appointed flight south and a knot of blue-coated policemen maintained a safe path from curb to dock entrance. Here was a touch of liveliness and gayety—the released laughter of people bent on a holiday, hopeful farewells called out heartily, taxicabs dashing up with exaggerated haste. He was warming himself at the flame of this genial pageant, when an opulent machine came rolling up to the curb. A sudden surge of arrivals had pressed into service every available porter, and the alighting occupants, a man and a woman, stood waiting for some one to help them with their luggage. Fred stared with impersonal curiosity. Then, as instinctively, he fell back. The man was Axel Hilmer and the woman was Helen Starratt! His shrinking movement must have singled him out for attention, because a policeman began to hustle him on, and the next instant he was conscious that Hilmer was calling in his voice of assured authority:
"Here, there, don't send that man away! I need some one to help me with these grips. This lady has got to catch the boat!"
The officer touched his hat respectfully and Fred felt himself gently impelled toward Helen Starratt. He did not have time to protest nor shape any plan of action. Instead, he answered Hilmer's imperious pantomime by grasping a suitcase in one hand and a valise in the other and staggering after them toward the waiting vessel.
They had arrived not a moment too soon; already the steamer was preparing to cast off. In the confusion which followed, Fred had very little sense of what was happening. He knew that a porter had relieved him of his burden and that Helen Starratt had pressed a silver coin into his hand. There was a scramble up the gangplank, a warning whistle, a chorus of farewell, and then silence… He had a realization that he had all but fainted—he looked up to find Hilmer at his side.
"What's the matter?" Hilmer was asking, brusquely. "Are you sick?"
He roused himself with a mighty effort.
"Yes."
"You look half starved, too… Why don't you go to work? Or are you one of those damned strikers?"
"No," he heard himself answer. "I'm just a man who's … who's up against it."
Hilmer took out a card and scribbled on it.
"Here, look up my superintendent at the yard to-morrow. He'll give you a job. There's plenty of work for those who want it. But don't lose that card … otherwise they won't let you see him."
Fred took the proffered pasteboard and as he did so his fingers closed over Hilmer's mangled thumb. He could feel himself trembling from head to foot… He waited until Hilmer was gone. Then he crawled slowly in the direction of the street again. Midway he felt some force impelling him to a backward glance. He turned about—a green smile betrayed Storch's sinister presence; Fred felt him swing close and whisper, triumphantly:
"That was your wife, wasn't it?"
"How do you know?"
"Never mind. Answer me—it was your wife?"
"Yes."
"How much did she give you?"
Fred looked down at the coin in his hand.
"Fifty cents."
"Fifty cents … for carrying two grips a hundred yards… Well, she must have money… And she's taking a little trip south—for her health, I suppose!… I wonder when friend Hilmer will follow?"
Fred tried to draw away, but Storch's insinuating clutch was too firm.
"Let me go!" he half begged and half commanded. "What business is all this of yours?… Who has told you all this about me?"
Storch continued to hang upon Fred's arm. "You told me yourself."
"I told you? When?"
"You were delirious for a good week… Don't you suppose you babbled then?"
"How much do you know?"
"Nearly everything,Fred Starratt! Nearly everything."
"Even my name!"
"Yes, even that."
Fred stood still for a moment and he closed both his eyes.
"Let's go home!" he said, hopelessly.
He heard Storch's malevolent chuckle answering him.
When they arrived at Storch's shack Fred was exhausted. He threw himself at once upon the couch, drawing the tattered quilts over his head, and thus he lay all night in a semistupor. He heard the nightly gathering drift in, and there were times when its babble reached him in vague faraway echoes. He sensed its departure, too, and the fact that Storch was flinging himself upon the pile of rags which served as his bed. His sleep was broken by a harried idea that he was attempting to catch a steamer which forever eluded him, trotting aimlessly up and down a gangplank which led nowhere, picking up a litter that spilled continually from a suitcase in his hand. It was not a dreaming state, but the projection of the main events of the preceding day distorted by fancy.
Toward morning he fell into a heavy sleep. He did not hear Storch leave. He woke at intervals during the day and relapsed into delicious dozes. It was evening when he finally roused himself. He rose. He felt extraordinarily refreshed, stronger, in fact, than he had been for weeks. Storch came in shortly after. He had his inevitable loaf of crisp French bread and a slice of cheese and in his hip pocket he had smuggled a pint bottle of thin red wine.
Fred laid the table with the simple utensils that such a meal required and the two sat down. Storch poured out two glasses of wine.
"I have had great fun to-day!" Storch said, gulping his claret with a flourish. "They're on my track again. You should have seen how easily I gave them the slip! As a matter of fact there is nothing duller than a detective. He usually has learned every formula laid down for the conduct of criminals and if you don't run true to form he gets sore."
"You mean you're being watched—shadowed?"
"Just that."
"What do you intend to do?"
Storch shrugged. "Being arrested and jailed is losing its novelty.I'll stick around awhile longer until a pet job or two isaccomplished… I'm particularly anxious to see Hilmer winged…What's your plan?"
"Plan?… I have no plan. I can't imagine what you're talking about. I know one thing, though … I'm going to leave this place at once."