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"Perhaps... I've been in an insane asylum... Now do you know who I am?" Brauer fell back. "No," he breathed: "it can't be possible! Fred Starratt is dead." Fred began to laugh. "You're right. But I want something to eat just the same. You're going to take me into Hjul's ... and buy me a meal. ... And after I've eaten perhaps you'll hear how I died and who killed me."
During the noon hour particularly it filtered through the midday tattle of business, pleasure, and obscenity at the Market, at Collins & Wheeland's, at Hjul's coffee house, at Grover's Lunchroom everywhere that clerks forgathered to appease their hunger and indulge in idle speculations.
He had come away from the house with the idea of getting a cup of coffee in a waffle kitchen on Kearny Street and his preoccupation had routed this vague plan. He was chuckling over his lapse when he swung into Hjul's and took a seat near the window. He ordered a hot roast-beef sandwich and coffee as he shared his joke with the waitress.
Sitting over a generous platter of pot roast and spaghetti at Hjul's, with Brauer's pallid face staring up at him, Fred Starratt had the realization that there was at least one mouselike human to whom he could play the role of cat. Brauer did not need to be prodded to speech. He told everything with the eagerness of a child caught in a fault and seeking to curry the favor of his questioner.
Starratt lingered in the marble-flanked doorway... The man crossed the street and stood on the corner. Fred decided to lunch at Hjul's. During the short walk to his destination he dismissed everything from his mind except the anticipation of food. He discovered he was very hungry and it struck him that he had forgotten to breakfast.
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