ad to fortune
on the morrow. Or to a lad determined to start upon a sunrise fishing
trip, and impatient of the first flush of dawn. After all, it took
great simplicity to approach the calamitous moments of life through
the channels of the commonplace.

Presently Storch was snoring with the zest which he always brought to
sleep. The night air had chilled the room past the point of comfort
and the lamp seemed to make little headway with its thin volume of
ascending warmth. Fred wrapped himself in a blanket and sat half
shivering in the gloom. At first, detached and unrelated thoughts ran
through his brain, but gradually his musing assumed a coherence.
To-morrow, at this time, he might be either a hunted murderer or a
victim himself of Storch's desperation. In any case, he would be
furnishing the text for many a newspaper sermon. How eagerly they
would trace his downfall, sniffing out the salacious bits for the
furtive enjoyment of the chemically pure! For there would be salacious
bits. Had he not spent the preceding night in the company of a fallen
woman? One by one the facts would be brought out, added to and
subtracted from, until the whole affair was a triumph of the transient
story-teller art, unrelieved by the remotest flash of understanding.
They would interview his former employers first. Mr. Ford would say:

"A steady, conscientious, faithful employee until he became bitten
with parlor radicalism."

And Brauer, rather frightened, yet garrulous, would add, for want of
anything better:

"An honest partner until he began hitting the booze."

There would be his wife, too. "I did all I could. Stood by him to the
last ... even when I discovered that there was another woman."

The authorities at Fairview would doubtless add their note to the
general chorus:

"An exceptional patient. He seemed to have planned deliberately to get
our confidence and then betray it... He was directly responsible for
Felix Monet's death. Without his influence Monet would never have
thought of escape."

And in summing up, the police would declare:

"A bad actor from the word go. One of the sort who reach a certain
point in respectability and then run amuck. A danger to the community
because of his brains."

But what of Hilmer? Fred Starratt had a feeling that Hilmer would be
discreet to a point of silence.

He could see every printed phrase as plainly as if he were reading it
all himself. How many times in the old days had he no