ile. "I went to a
little town in South America. There was no treaty of extradition
there--nor anything else civilized and decent. I smoked cigarettes and
drank what passed for rum, on the balcony of an impossible hotel, and
otherwise groped about for the path that leads to the devil. After a
year, I wrote to Hayden. He answered, urging me to stay away. He
intimated that the thing we had done was on my shoulders. I was ashamed,
frightfully unhappy. I didn't dare write to--her. I had disgraced her. I
asked Hayden about her, and he wrote back that she was shortly to marry
him. After that I didn't want to come back to Reuton. I wanted most--to
die.

"The years crept by on the balcony of that impossible hotel. Six of
them. The first in bitter memories, memories of a red card that danced
fiendishly before my eyes when I closed them--the last in a fierce
biting desire to come back to the world I had left. At last, a few
months ago, I wrote to another college friend of mine, Drayton, and told
him the whole story. I did not know that he had been elected prosecutor
in Reuton. He answered with a kind pitying letter--and finally I knew
the horrible truth. Nothing had ever happened. The thing we had done had
never been discovered. Hayden had lied. He had even lied about his
engagement to Myra Thornhill. There, he had made a reality out of what
was simply his great desire.

"You can imagine my feelings. Six years in a tomb, a comic opera sort of
tomb, where a silly surf was forever pounding, and foolish palms kept
waving. Six years--for nothing. Six years, while Hayden, guiltier than
I, stayed behind to enjoy the good things of life, to plead for the girl
whose lover he had banished.

"I lost no time in coming north. Three days ago I entered Drayton's
office. I was ready and willing that the wrong Hayden and I had done
should be made public. Drayton informed me that legally there had been
no crime, that Hayden had straightened things out in time, that we had
defrauded no one. And he told me that for whatever sin I had committed
he thought I had more than atoned down there in that town that God
forgot. I think I had. He explained to me about the trap he had laid for
Hayden up here at Baldpate Inn. I begged to help. What happened after,
you know as well as I."

"Yes, I think I do," agreed Mr. Magee softly.

"I have told you the whole story," Kendrick replied, "and yet it seems
to me that still it is not all told. Why should Hayde