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Updated: June 28, 2025
He turned about a green smile betrayed Storch's sinister presence; Fred felt him swing close and whisper, triumphantly: "That was your wife, wasn't it?" "How do you know?" "Never mind. Answer me it was your wife?" "Yes." "How much did she give you?" Fred looked down at the coin in his hand. "Fifty cents."
Fred pretended to find Storch's manner infectious. He had never seen anyone so eager, so thrilling with anticipation. "I've got to buy you a new outfit complete," Storch went on, filling the coffeepot with water. "And you must be shaved and shorn and made human-looking again.
Presently he heard Storch's voice coming to his ears out of a friendly dusk: "It's nine-thirty...I guess we had better be moving." He did not stir at first...he merely sat staring at Storch, very much as a man waking suddenly and not yet alive to the precise details of his environment. "Moving...where?" he finally inquired. Storch crumpled the newspaper in his hand viciously.
Instinctively his footsteps found their way to Storch's shack. A light was glimmering inside. Fred beat upon the door. It swung open quickly, revealing Storch's greenish teeth bared in a wide smile of satisfaction. "Come in ... come in!" Storch cried out gayly. "Have a good day?" "Excellent!" Fred snapped back, venomously. "I learned, among other things, that I am legally dead."
Yet the locked door became at once the symbol of both Storch's strength and weakness. Storch was determined to have either his body or his soul. And, at that moment, Fred Starratt made his choice. Next morning Storch was up early and bustling about with unusual clatter. "Get up!" he cried, gayly, to Fred. "Do you realize this is Friday?... There are a thousand details to attend to."
He emerged with an indifferently trimmed beard and his hair clipped into a semblance of neatness. He felt better, in spite of his tattered suit and gaping footgear. Hilmer's card was still in his pocket. His plans were hazy, nebulous, in fact. He was not quite sure as to his next move. It seemed useless to attempt to flee from Storch's shelter.
He was like a man coming suddenly out of a mist into the blinding sunshine of some valley sheltered from the sea. "Does it matter in the least whether there is one victim or six?" He repeated Storch's question over and over again. Yes, it did matter why, he could not have said. But even in a vague way there had been a certain point in winging Hilmer.
Fred made no reply. Indeed, the meal was finished in silence. Presently Storch's disciples began to drift in. The meeting lasted almost until midnight. They were all at fever heat, strung tensely by Storch's unerring pressure. At the last moment the man who had previously put the question concerning Hilmer prodded Storch again. Storch fixed Fred suddenly with a gaze that pierced him through.
"Fifty cents ... for carrying two grips a hundred yards... Well, she must have money... And she's taking a little trip south for her health, I suppose!... I wonder when friend Hilmer will follow?" Fred tried to draw away, but Storch's insinuating clutch was too firm. "Let me go!" he half begged and half commanded. "What business is all this of yours?... Who has told you all this about me?"
But slowly the outlines of Monet grew less and less tangible and the personality of Storch more and more shot through with warm-breathed vitality, and the strange company that gathered at dusk about the lamp became living things instead of shadows. Yet it took him some time to realize that these nightly gatherings at Storch's were composed of real flesh and blood.
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