ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for it's
something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged
it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer
circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I sailed
from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English
student of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I left
Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from
Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to put before
the London newspapers. Till yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail
some, and was feeling pretty happy. Then ...'

The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some more
whisky.

'Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to
stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour
or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I
recognized him ... He came in and spoke to the porter ... When I came
back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore
the name of the man I want least to meet on God's earth.'

I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked scare on
his face, completed my conviction of his honesty. My own voice
sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.

'I realized that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that
there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was
dead they would go to sleep again.'

'How did you manage it?'

'I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got
myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no slouch
at disguises. Then I got a corpse--you can always get a body in London
if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the
top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room.
You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed
and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear
out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't
abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that
corpse. He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much
alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the
weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I
daresay there will be somebody tomorrow to swear to having heard a
shot, but