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There was nothing he could offer ... not even a lodging for the night. Instead he had turned and walked briskly in an opposite direction. As he drew nearer town the cries of the newsboys grew more insistent ... so insistent that Fred bought a paper. By this time they had cleared away the charred wreckage of Storch's shack, discovering the secret which its ruins had concealed.
She continued to stand, immobile, wrapped in the sinister patience of her calling. Fred could not take his eyes from her. "She's waiting for you," Storch said. Fred smiled wanly. "Do you want to go? ... If you do I'll wait here!" Fred tried to conceal his conflicting emotions. He did not want to betray his surprise at Storch's sudden and irrational indiscretion.
The first time he had heard deliberate and passionless murder all but plotted in Storch's huddled room he had felt a quick heartbeat of instinctive protest. Had he been stronger at that moment he would have leaped to his feet in opposition. But the moment passed and when he heard the subject broached again he listened curiously. Finally he ceased to feel the slightest tremor of revolt.
He had never been wrapped in a more exquisite melancholy not even during the rain-raked days at Fairview. He knew that Storch was by his side, but, for the moment, this sinister personality seemed to lose its power and he felt Monet near him. It was as it had been during those days upon Storch's couch with death beckoning the nearer he approached the dead line, the more distinctly he saw Monet.
Yes, the meanest coward in existence had his innate courage and there was a note of bravery in life on any terms. Fred stood before Storch's sleeping form a long time, and all manner of impulses stirred him. There was even a moment when it came to him that he might fall upon his gaoler while he slept and achieve a swift freedom.
It was on this incredible fare that Fred Starratt won back his strength. His exhaustion was an exhaustion of the spirit, and food seemed to have little part in either his disorder or his recovery. Whatever Storch's specific grievance with life, he never voiced it and in this he won Fred's admiration.
He took a delight in cutting the heart and soul out of his victims and reducing them to puppets stuffed with sawdust, answering the slightest pressure of his hands. How completely Fred Starratt understood all this now! And in the blinding flash of this realization he saw also the hidden spring that had answered Storch's pressure.
Fred wrapped himself in a blanket and sat half shivering in the gloom. At first, detached and unrelated thoughts ran through his brain, but gradually his musing assumed a coherence. To-morrow, at this time, he might be either a hunted murderer or a victim himself of Storch's desperation. In any case, he would be furnishing the text for many a newspaper sermon.
He could still be swept by gusts of feeling ... he could even risk his life to preserve it. He turned the pages of the newspaper over mechanically, reading word upon word which held not the slightest meaning. He felt Storch's eyes upon him, drawn, no doubt, by a mixture of subtle doubts and vague appraisals. His thoughts flew to Ginger. What was she doing at this moment?
Waleh's Brazil. Official Letter of Hon. Mr. Ward, from Mexico. Dr. Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Franklin on The Peopling of Countries. Ramsay's Essay. Botham's Sugar Cultivation in Batavia. Marsden's History of Sumatra. Coxe's Travels. Dr. Anderson's Observations on Slavery. Storch's Political Economy. Adam Smith. J. Jeremies' Essays. Here, gentlemen, the issue is tendered.
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