“With John Barleycorn?” laughed Barrison. “Oh, see here, Willie, what’s the difference? If you prefer your whisky to mine, I’ll get you a corkscrew, and you can just as well start here. Eh? Make an exception and have a couple of drinks with me, like a good sport.” He felt slightly ashamed of himself, but he prodded his conscience out of the way by telling himself that as long as the man was going to get drunk anyway, he might just as well—— Willie hesitated and was lost. The first drink he poured out made his host gasp; it nearly filled the tumbler. “Will you take it straight, man?” he asked, in a tone of awe. “Certainly I will. I don’t take it for the taste, I take it for the effect. The more you take at a time, the quicker you get results. What’s the good of little dabs of drinks like yours, drowned in soda water? When I drink, I drink.” “I perceive that you do!” murmured Barrison, and watched him swallow the entire contents of the glass in three gulps. He choked a bit, and accepted a drink of water, then leaned back with an expression of pure bliss stealing over his face. “Gee, that was good!” he whispered joyously. “Now I’ll have one more in a minute; that will start me off comfortably. Then I’ll go home. You know,” he added, with that shrewd glance of his, “I’m on to your getting me to tank up here; you know I’ll talk more. But I’m blessed if I can make out what it is you want to know. If there’s any dark mystery going, I’m not in it. But you just pump ahead.” He poured out another enormous draft. “Mortimer used to be in a sort of circus, a wild West show, didn’t he?” Willie grunted assent between swallows. “It was a sort of punk third-class show,” he said. “Never played big time, just ordinary tanks and wood piles out West. They had a string of horses and a few cowboys who could do fancy riding; Mortimer was one of them. His real name was Morton. The gov’nor was waiting to make connections somewhere on his way to the coast, and dropped in to see one or two of the stunts. This chap was a sort of matinée idol wherever he went, and the gov’nor spotted him as a drawing card if he ever happened on the right part. You know the gov’nor never forgets anything, and never overlooks a bet. He took the guy’s name and address, and put him away in the back of his head somewhere, the way he always does. When Carlton came to him with this war-play proposition, the gov’nor thought of Morton, and wrote him. That’s all I know about it.” “Was Mortimer married?” “Not that I know of. Not likely—or, rather, it’s likely he had half a dozen wives!” Barrison was disappointed; he had thought it just possible—there was the pistol, marked with M, and the unknown woman who had been in the dressing room that night. However, Willie was not proving much of a help. Barrison yawned and thought of bed. “One more question,” he asked suddenly. “What was the name of the show?”