t sets me well-nigh crazy. The
police. I wonder. Would they look after him? Could you take him back
with you when I'm dead? Do they look after poor orphans, poor little
bits of life like him? Or is he too small a thing in the work they have
to do? I pray God you'll take him out of this when I'm dead."

Steve strove to keep a steady tone. The appeal was heartrending.

"Don't you fret that way, ma'm," he cried earnestly. "If those things
happen you reckon are going to, I'll see that no harm, I can help, comes
to him. He's just a bright little ray of light, and I guess God didn't
set him on this earth to leave him helpless in such a country as this."

A world of relief in the mother's eyes thanked him.

"I--I--" she began, and the man promptly broke in.

"You needn't try to thank me ..." Steve's manner was gravely kind.
"Maybe when you've told me things I'll be able to locate your husband.
And maybe he isn't dead."

The woman's eyes denied him hopelessly.

"He's dead--sure," she said. "Whatever's happened he's--dead. Say,
listen, I'd best try and tell you all from the start," she went on, with
renewed energy. "It's the only way. And it's a straight story without
much shame in it. My husband, Marcel Brand, is a Dane, with French blood
in his veins. He's a great chemist, who learned everything the Germans
could teach him. He absorbed their knowledge, but not their ways. He was
a good and great man, whose whole idea of life was to care for his wife
and child, and expend all his knowledge to help the world of suffering
humanity. It was for that reason that seven years ago he realized all he
possessed, and, taking Cy Allshore as a partner, came up here."

"To help suffering humanity?"

Incredulity found expression almost before Steve was aware of it.

"Yes, I know. It sounds crazy," the sick woman went on. "But it isn't.
Nothing Marcel ever did was crazy. All his life he has been studying
drugs, and his studies have taken him into all sorts of crazy corners of
the world. Thibet, Siberia, Brazil, Tropical Africa, India, and
now--Unaga. It was he who discovered Adresol, that wonderful, priceless
drug, which if it could only be obtained in sufficient quantities would
be the greatest boon to humanity for--as he used to say himself--all
time. Oh, I can't tell you about that," she exclaimed wearily, "guess it
would need someone cleverer than I. But it's that brought us here, and
kept us here for seven years. And maybe we'd