"My name, suh, is Calhoun Blease," he said in a new manner. "I don't understand this yit, but I do not believe you are foolin' with me, suh." "If I am, you've still got your rifle," said Payne. "Now, tell me something: Didn't Mr. Garman send you word that my job was not to be molested or hindered?" At the mention of Garman's name, Blease's thin figure seemed to collapse. "Garman? Garman don't know we're here, does he? Are--are you a friend of Mr. Garman's, suh?" "I think," replied Payne, "he is the worst enemy I've got. Do you know him?" After a long pause Blease said slowly: "I was his caretaker over there once." "What do you think of him?" "He is the worst enemy any man can have," muttered the squatter. "He--don't know we're here? Good. Nobody does. He's too smart and hard to be just a man. Garman is--he--he was the devil who made us outcasts like we be--he did it. Hiding our faces from the world, account of him!" "Do you want to tell me what he did to you?" Blease glanced at the little shack. "No, no. I reckon I don't want to tell you. But--Mrs. Blease once was secretary--never mind. Garman and his swimming pool---- No, I ain't telling; I ain't telling!" XXII The rest of the day was torture for Payne. Blease had said too much and too little for him to have any peace. He had caught one glimpse of the woman in the shack, and alternately he wished he had not seen her and that the sight of her had been more illuminating. Blease's wife was no "cracker," no native of those parts, no type which belonged in a squatter's shack in the heart of a jungle. Her presence there seemed to cry out the news of some foul miscarriage of destiny, of a wrong to her life too hideous to imagine. Upon her face--still young--was the tale of a broken soul protesting against the wrong life had dealt it. He drew his hands across his brow to dispel the memory of that look and to try to see Mrs. Blease as she had been before it came. A high type of business secretary. Blease had started to tell and had stopped. Secretary to Garman possibly. Blease had been Garman's caretaker. Payne recalled the swimming pool with its drug-like atmosphere. What had happened there? He felt he would never know, did not wish to know. What might be happening there now? A river of ice seemed to roll down his spine and little rivulets seemed to trickle out to the last nerve tips of his fingers, chilling him through and through; and he worked through the day dry-throated and breathing hard, conscious that a crisis in his life lay before him. Why should it affect him so? What had he to do with Garman's affairs or the affairs of those with him? The vision of the girl called Annette, as he first saw her in the dawn on Gumbo Key, stood before his eyes, and he knew how false his attempts at disinterest. Life had caught him up in a net with other lives. He thought of Garman, and groaned behind set teeth.