I laid in
some stores, for I guessed you would want to stoke up some after your
travels.'

He brought out a couple of Strassburg pies, a cheese, a cold chicken, a
loaf, and three bottles of champagne.

'Fizz,' said Sandy rapturously. 'And a dry Heidsieck too! We're in
luck, Dick, old man.'

I never ate a more welcome meal, for we had starved in that dirty
hotel. But I had still the old feeling of the hunted, and before I
began I asked about the door.

'That's all right,' said Sandy. 'My fellows are on the stair and at
the gate. If the _Metreb_ are in possession, you may bet that other
people will keep off. Your past is blotted out, clean vanished away,
and you begin tomorrow morning with a new sheet. Blenkiron's the man
you've got to thank for that. He was pretty certain you'd get here,
but he was also certain that you'd arrive in a hurry with a good many
inquirers behind you. So he arranged that you should leak away and
start fresh.'

'Your name is Richard Hanau,' Blenkiron said, 'born in Cleveland, Ohio,
of German parentage on both sides. One of our brightest
mining-engineers, and the apple of Guggenheim's eye. You arrived this
afternoon from Constanza, and I met you at the packet. The clothes for
the part are in your bedroom next door. But I guess all that can wait,
for I'm anxious to get to business. We're not here on a joy-ride,
Major, so I reckon we'll leave out the dime-novel adventures. I'm just
dying to hear them, but they'll keep. I want to know how our mutual
inquiries have prospered.'

He gave Peter and me cigars, and we sat ourselves in armchairs in front
of the blaze. Sandy squatted cross-legged on the hearthrug and lit a
foul old briar pipe, which he extricated from some pouch among his
skins. And so began that conversation which had never been out of my
thoughts for four hectic weeks.

'If I presume to begin,' said Blenkiron, 'it's because I reckon my
story is the shortest. I have to confess to you, gentlemen, that I
have failed.'

He drew down the corners of his mouth till he looked a cross between a
music-hall comedian and a sick child.

'If you were looking for something in the root of the hedge, you
wouldn't want to scour the road in a high-speed automobile. And still
less would you want to get a bird's-eye view in an aeroplane. That
parable about fits my case. I have been in the clouds and I've been
scorching on the pikes, but what I was wanting was in the ditch all t