"No--no!" The giant waved a hand in dismissal of threat. "Old Ba'teese, he still joke. Ba'teese say he tell you something. Eet is this. You see those people? All right. _Bon_--good. You don' know one. You know the other. Yes? _Oui_? Ba'teese not know why you do it. Ba'teese not care. Ba'teese is right--in here." He patted his heart with a big hand. "But you--you not tell the truth. I know. I tickle your feet." "You're crazy!" "So, mebbe. Ba'teese have his trouble. Sometime Ba'teese wish he go crazy--like you say." The face suddenly aged. The twinkling light left the eyes. The big hands knitted, and the man was silent for a long moment. Then, "But Ba'-teese he know--see?" He pointed to his head, then twisting, ran his finger down his spine. "When eet is the--what-you-say, amnesia--the nerve eet no work in the foot. I could tickle, tickle, tickle, and you would not know. But with you--blooey--right away, you feel. So, for some reason, you are, what-you-say?--shamming. But you are Ba'teese' gues'. You sleep in Ba'teese' bed. You eat Ba'teese' food. So long as that, you are Ba'teese' friend. Ba'teese--" he looked with quiet, fatherly eyes toward the young man on the bed--"shall ask no question--and Ba'teese shall tell no tales!" CHAPTER IV The simple statement of the gigantic trapper swept the confidence from Houston and left him at a disadvantage. His decision had been a hasty one,--a thing to gain time, a scheme by which he had felt he could, at the proper time, take Thayer off his guard and cause him to come into the open with his plans, whatever they might be. Fate had played a strange game with Barry Houston. It had taken a care-free, happy-go-lucky youth and turned him into a suspicious, distrustful person with a constantly morbid strain which struggled everlastingly for supremacy over his usually cheery grin and his naturally optimistic outlook upon life. For Fate had allowed Houston to live the youth of his life in ease and brightness and lack of worry, only that it might descend upon him with the greatest cloud that man can know. And two years of memories, two years of bitterness, two years of ugly recollections had made its mark. In all his dealings with Thayer, conducted though they might have been at a distance, Barry Houston could not place his finger upon one tangible thing that would reveal his crookedness. But he had suspected; had come to investigate, and to learn, even before he was ready to receive the information, that his suspicions had been, in some wise at least, correct. To follow those suspicions to their stopping place Barry had feigned amnesia. And it had lasted just long enough for this grinning man who stood at the foot of the bed to tickle his feet!