"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 remember what you want to know," and his head fell forward into his hands. For nearly a minute, Hipps looked at him in silence and his face was very white indeed. Then with the breath escaping between his teeth he turned away. It was sheer lunacy on the part of Richard to peep through his fingers to judge the effect of his words. For it is an established truth that the nerves of a man's back are sensitive to another's gaze. Ezra Hipps swung round so quickly that Richard failed to cover his face in time. The mischief was done.