dman?"

"That's my business."

"No, it's not. Something has happened that gives me the right to know.
Forget that I used to be on the cops. I'm asking you now as one soldier
to another: When did you begin calling yourself Goodman?"

"About a year ago--when I first got into the service."

"How did you get in?"

"Enlisted."

"Where? New York?"

"No. Cleveland."

"What made you enlist?"

"Say, wot's this--thoid-degree stuff?"

"I told you just now that I figured I had a right to know. When a man
saves your life it puts him under an obligation to you--I mean puts you
under an obligation to him," he corrected.

"Well, if you put it that way--maybe it was because I wanted to duck out
of reach of you bulls. Maybe because I wanted to go straight a while.
Maybe because I wanted to show that a bad guy could do somethin' for his
country. Dope it out for yourself. That used to be your game--dopin'
things out--wasn't it?"

"I'm trying to, now. Tell me, does anybody know--anybody in the Army, I
mean--know who you are?"

"Nobody but you; and you might call it an accident, the way you come to
find out."

"Something like that. How's your record since you joined up?"

"Clean as anybody's."

"And what's your idea about keeping on going straight after the war is
over and you get out of service?

"Don't answer unless you feel like it; only I've got my own private
reasons for wanting to know."

"Well, I know a trade--learnt it in stir, but I know it. I'm a
steamfitter by trade, only I ain't never worked much at it. Maybe when I
get back I'd try workin' at it steady if you flatties would only keep
off me back. Anything else you wanted to find out?" His tone was
sneering almost. "If there's not, I think I'll try to take a nap."

"Not now--but I'd like to talk to you again about some things when we're
both rested up."

"Have it your own way. I can't get away from you for a while--not with
this hole drilled in me shoulder."

However, Ginsburg did not have it his own way. The wound in his leg gave
threat of trouble and at once he was shifted south to one of the big
base hospitals. An operation followed and after that a rather long, slow
convalescence.

In the same week of November that the armistice was signed, Ginsburg,
limping slightly, went aboard a troopship bound for home. It befell,
therefore, that he spent the winter on sick leave in New York. He had
plenty of spare time on his hands and some of it he employe