“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.”