At a black hour, before the first greenish glow was quickening the east, he tiptoed and stood gazing down at Storch.  He had never seen a face more placid and untroubled.  He felt that any man must have an extraordinary sense of self-righteousness to yield so completely to serenity in the face of deliberate crime.  But Storch was of the stuff of which all fanatics were made.  Ends to him always justified means.  Of such were the Inquisitors of Spain, the Puritans of the Reformation, the radicals of to-day.  They had neither doubts nor fears nor pity, and the helmets of their faith were a screen behind which they hid their overweening egotism.  They were ever seeking to entrap humanity and humanity was forever in the end eluding them.  And if Hilmer were the eternal questioner made flesh, the gamekeeper beating the furtive birds from the brush, this man Storch was the eternal hunter, at once patient and relentless for his quarry.

And now the hunter slept with a smile on his lips.  Of what could he be dreaming?  Was it possible to dream of smile-fashioning themes with potential destruction within a stone’s throw?  In a corner of this room, in a well-packed square case, reposed the force that, once set in motion at the proper or miscalculated moment, could hurl both Storch and Fred Starratt to eternity, and yet Storch slept undisturbed.  Well, was not the broader canvas of life full of just such profound faith or profound indifference?  Did not society itself sleep with the repressed hatreds of the submerged waiting their appointed season?  And while new worlds flew flaming from the wheel of creation, and old ones died in an eye’s twinkling, did not the race dream on contemptuous of the changes which lurked in the restless heavens?  Yes, the meanest coward in existence had his innate courage and there was a note of bravery in life on any terms.

Fred stood before Storch’s sleeping form a long time, and all manner of impulses stirred him.  There was even a moment when it came to him that he might fall upon his gaoler while he slept and achieve a swift freedom.  And every ignoble murder of legend or history beckoned him with the hands of red expediency.  He ended by going to the door and opening it cautiously as he had done the night before.  But this time the operation was more skillful and no warning click disturbed the slumberer.  He crept out into the night, down the cliff’s edge, looking back for the betraying shadow of a hidden spy.  But there seemed to be nothing to block his freedom.  A virginal moon was languishing upon the western rim of hills...a solitary cock crew lustily...occasional footfalls floated up from the paved streets below...a cart rumbled in the gloom.  All these noises of the night were extraordinarily friendly...like the smothered murmurings of a youth escaping from the chains of sleep in pleasant dreaming.

A swarm of platitudes surging through his brain urged him to flight.  But in the end self-esteem gave him his final cue, and he knew in a flash how futile would be any truce with cowardice.  A locked door would have justified escape, but in the face of an unlatched threshold there was only one course conceivable.