the third degree?" he demanded.

"What you've shown me."

Richard's voice sounded far away and disinterested.

"Show you some more. Stand up! Stand up! I can't bear a drowsy man."
And he kicked the chair half across the room. "Don't hang on to that
table--stand on your legs," and grasping Richard by his shirt front he
forced him into an upright position and held him there. His voice
hardened and rasped like a cross cut file as question after question
boomed out with the relentless quality of minute guns.

"A year ago you went travelling."

"You say so." The replies were barely audible.

"During that time you tumbled on your find."

"If I did, I did."

"When was it you struck?"

"That's my affair."

"I've made it mine. When was it you struck?"

"During the six months," said Richard with a twinkle of dying humour.

"That answer won't do."

"Only one you'll get."

"I'm pretty close behind you, Anthony Barraclough."

Again the twinkle came and went as Richard gave answer.

"Still behind?"

"Anthony Barraclough, I've a complete list of the places you visited."

"Been buying a pocket atlas?"

"The actual places."

"Fine!"

"And I could hazard a guess where the locality is. Like me to try?"

"If it amuses you any."

The American's voice rose and filled the room, reverberant as thunder.

"P'r'aps it isn't so far away after all."

And out of the wreckage of his resources, Richard Frencham Altar
brought up his big guns for a final effort at counter battery.

"P'r'aps it isn't, p'r'aps it is," he cried. "Why, you blasted fool,
you'll get nothing from me--nothing. If you know so damn much go and
find the place yourself."

Ezra Hipps seized him by the shoulders and flung him back against the
wall.

"We mean to find out."

"Not from me--not from me," Richard repeated, but the power which had
upheld him was dwindling fast. He knew, knew beyond question that in a
few more moments the truth would be shaken out of him unless he could
devise some means of slackening the strain. And then he had an
inspiration.

"You fool! You fool!" he cried. "Can't you see what you've done, you
and your idiot crew? As you've driven health from my body so, by your
blasted privations, you've driven memory from my head."

He tottered drunkenly toward a chair and sat down all of a heap.

"What's that?" demanded Hipps, with real alarm.

"I can't remember," Richard laughed hysterically. "I can't rememb