Presently he heard a key turn and he felt himself to be completely in the hands of his jailer.  Yet the locked door became at once the symbol of both Storch’s strength and weakness.  Storch was determined to have either his body or his soul.  And, at that moment, Fred Starratt made his choice.

Next morning Storch was up early and bustling about with unusual clatter.

“Get up!” he cried, gayly, to Fred.  “Do you realize this is Friday?...  There are a thousand details to attend to.”

Fred pretended to find Storch’s manner infectious.  He had never seen anyone so eager, so thrilling with anticipation.

“I’ve got to buy you a new outfit complete,” Storch went on, filling the coffeepot with water.  “And you must be shaved and shorn and made human-looking again.  Rags are well enough to wrap discontent in ... but one should have a different make-up for achievement...  What was the matter last night?”

“Oh, a bit of panic, I guess,” Fred returned, nonchalantly.  “But I’m all right this morning.”

Storch rubbed his hands in satisfaction, and he smiled continually.

They went out shortly after nine o’clock and in San Francisco’s embryo ghetto at McAllister and Fillmore streets they bought a decent-looking misfit suit and a pair of second-hand shoes, to say nothing of a bargain in shirts.  A visit to a neighboring barber followed.  Storch permitted Fred to enter the shop alone, but he stood upon the corner and waited.

When the barber finished, Fred was startled.  Standing before the mirror he gazed at his smooth-shaven cheek again and trembled.  It was like a resurrection.  Even Storch was startled.  Fred caught a suggestion of doubt in the gaze his jailer threw at him.  It was almost as if Storch said: 

“You are not the man I thought you.”

After that Fred had a sense that Storch watched him more narrowly.  Impulses toward forcing the issue at once assailed Fred, but he was too uncertain as to the outcome.  He decided that the safest thing was to wait until the very last moment, trying to prolong the issue until it would be too late for Storch to lay other plans.

They went back to the shack for a bite of lunch.  After they had eaten, Fred put on his new clothes.  He felt now completely cut off from the cankerous life which had been so deliberately eating its way into his philosophy.  Could it be possible that clothes did in some mysterious way make the man?  Would his unkempt beard and gaping shoes and tattered clothing have kept him nearer the path of violence?

A little after three o’clock in the afternoon a man came to the door and handed Storch a carefully wrapped package.  They did not exchange a word.  Storch took the package and stowed it away in a corner, covering it with a ragged quilt.

“That is the bomb!” flashed through Fred’s mind.

From that moment on this suggestive corner of the room was filled with a mysterious fascination.  It was like living on the edge of a volcano.