“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!  Fred
Starratt 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.