le trip south--for her
health, I suppose!... I wonder when friend Hilmer will follow?"

Fred tried to draw away, but Storch's insinuating clutch was too firm.

"Let me go!" he half begged and half commanded. "What business is all
this of yours?... Who has told you all this about me?"

Storch continued to hang upon Fred's arm. "You told me yourself."

"I told you? When?"

"You were delirious for a good week... Don't you suppose you babbled
then?"

"How much do you know?"

"Nearly everything, _Fred Starratt_! Nearly everything."

"Even my name!"

"Yes, even that."

Fred stood still for a moment and he closed both his eyes.

"Let's go home!" he said, hopelessly.

He heard Storch's malevolent chuckle answering him.

When they arrived at Storch's shack Fred was exhausted. He threw
himself at once upon the couch, drawing the tattered quilts over his
head, and thus he lay all night in a semistupor. He heard the nightly
gathering drift in, and there were times when its babble reached him
in vague faraway echoes. He sensed its departure, too, and the fact
that Storch was flinging himself upon the pile of rags which served as
his bed. His sleep was broken by a harried idea that he was attempting
to catch a steamer which forever eluded him, trotting aimlessly up and
down a gangplank which led nowhere, picking up a litter that spilled
continually from a suitcase in his hand. It was not a dreaming state,
but the projection of the main events of the preceding day distorted
by fancy.

Toward morning he fell into a heavy sleep. He did not hear Storch
leave. He woke at intervals during the day and relapsed into delicious
dozes. It was evening when he finally roused himself. He rose. He felt
extraordinarily refreshed, stronger, in fact, than he had been for
weeks. Storch came in shortly after. He had his inevitable loaf of
crisp French bread and a slice of cheese and in his hip pocket he had
smuggled a pint bottle of thin red wine.

Fred laid the table with the simple utensils that such a meal required
and the two sat down. Storch poured out two glasses of wine.

"I have had great fun to-day!" Storch said, gulping his claret with a
flourish. "They're on my track again. You should have seen how easily
I gave them the slip! As a matter of fact there is nothing duller than
a detective. He usually has learned every formula laid down for the
conduct of criminals and if you don't run true to form he gets sore."

"You mean