And there he stopped.  He had fought too long at the raw edge of things to allow himself to be persuaded by delusions, and he confessed that it was John Keith who was holding him, that in some inexplicable way John Keith, though officially dead and buried, was mixed up in a mysterious affair in which Miriam Kirkstone and Shan Tung were the moving factors.  And inasmuch as he was now Derwent Conniston and no longer John Keith, he took the logical point of arguing that the affair was none of his business, and that he could go on to the mountains if he pleased.  Only in that direction could he see ice of a sane and perfect thickness, to carry out the metaphor in his head.  He could report indifferently to McDowell, forget Miss Kirkstone, and disappear from the menace of Shan Tung’s eyes.  John Keith, he repeated, would be officially dead, and being dead, the law would have no further interest in him.

He prodded himself on with this thought as he fumbled his way through darkness down into town.  Miriam Kirkstone in her golden way was alluring; the mystery that shadowed the big house on the hill was fascinating to his hunting instincts; he had the desire, growing fast, to come at grips with Shan Tung.  But he had not foreseen these things, and neither had Conniston foreseen them.  They had planned only for the salvation of John Keith’s precious neck, and tonight he had almost forgotten the existence of that unpleasant reality, the hangman.  Truth settled upon him with depressing effect, and an infinite loneliness turned his mind again to the mountains of his dreams.

The town was empty of life.  Lights glowed here and there through the mist; now and then a door opened; down near the river a dog howled forlornly.  Everything was shut against him.  There were no longer homes where he might call and be greeted with a cheery “Good evening, Keith.  Glad to see you.  Come in out of the wet.”  He could not even go to Duggan, his old river friend.  He realized now that his old friends were the very ones he must avoid most carefully to escape self-betrayal.  Friendship no longer existed for him; the town was a desert without an oasis where he might reclaim some of the things he had lost.  Memories he had treasured gave place to bitter ones.  His own townfolk, of all people, were his readiest enemies, and his loneliness clutched him tighter, until the air itself seemed thick and difficult to breathe.  For the time Derwent Conniston was utterly submerged in the overwhelming yearnings of John Keith.

He dropped into a dimly lighted shop to purchase a box of cigars.  It was deserted except for the proprietor.  His elbow bumped into a telephone.  He would call up Wallie and tell him to have a good fire waiting for him, and in the company of that fire he would do a lot of thinking before getting into communication with McDowell.

It was not Wallie who answered him, and he was about to apologize for getting the wrong number when the voice at the other end asked,