I may be arrested if I go out on the street. And you rather
more than intimate that a woman named Beverly Carlysle is mixed up in it
somehow. I take it that I knew her."

"Yes. You knew her," Bassett said slowly. At the intimation in his tone
Dick surveyed him for a moment without speaking. His face, pale before,
took on a grayish tinge.

"I wasn't--married to her?"

"No. You didn't marry her. See here, Clark, this is straight goods, is
it? You're not trying to put something over on me? Because if you are,
you needn't. I'd about made up my mind to follow the story through for
my own satisfaction, and then quit cold on it. When a man's pulled
himself out of the mud as you have it's not my business to pull him
down. But I don't want you to pull any bunk."

Dick winced.

"Out of the mud!" he said. "No. I'm telling you the truth, Bassett. I
have some fragmentary memories, places and people, but no names, and
all of them, I imagine from my childhood. I pick up at a cabin in the
mountains, with snow around, and David Livingstone feeding me soup with
a tin spoon." He tried to smile and failed. His face twitched. "I could
stand it for myself," he said, "but I've tied another life to mine, like
a cursed fool, and now you speak of a woman, and of arrest. Arrest! For
what?"

"Suppose," Bassett said after a moment, "suppose you let that go just
now, and tell me more about this--this gap. You're a medical man. You've
probably gone into your own case pretty thoroughly. I'm accepting your
statement, you see. As a matter of fact it must be true, or you wouldn't
be here. But I've got to know what I'm doing before I lay my cards
on the table. Make it simple, if you can. I don't know your medical
jargon."

Dick did his best. The mind closed down now and then, mainly from a
shock. No, there was no injury required. He didn't think he had had an
injury. A mental shock would do it, if it were strong enough. And fear.
It was generally fear. He had never considered himself braver than the
other fellow, but no man liked to think that he had a cowardly mind.
Even if things hadn't broken as they had, he'd have come back before
he went to the length of marriage, to find out what it was he had been
afraid of. He paused then, to give Bassett a chance to tell him, but the
reporter only said: "Go on, you put your cards on the table, and then
I'll lay mine out."

Dick went on. He didn't blame Bassett. If there was something that was
in his l