seal applauding itself. Sharp and clear, it gradually drowned out the
hysterical sound of laughter that was making the room hideous with sound.
"Did you do it," the older man repeated.
The younger man said, "No... I don't think so."
"You don't think so? Don't you know?"
"I don't know. I was trying to get away from you... I opened this door...
and that's all I know. I came to with a knife in my hand and death in the other
room." The younger man began to laugh again. "I ran from you to meet my fate. No
matter how fast I ran, I couldn't get here any later or earlier. The fates must
be screaming with laughter!"
"I'm afraid the fates have other things to do besides laughing at you.
Shut up!" The man's face was as harsh as his voice. "Stop giggling or I'll
leave you to your fate!"
"But you are my fate. If I hadn't been running from you, I could not have
made it here! You drove me into this!"
"You drove yourself here! You forged the check, not me! You make your own
fate!"
"How true. How prosaically, how horribly true. But I forged the check
because my father doesn't approve of the way I live! Maybe it was my father who
made my fate."
"We haven't time for idle chitchat." The tall, older man walked into the
other room.
There was a banging at the door. A loud voice called, "Hey, Ally! I ain't
gonna wait out here all day! Come on. Open up!"
The tall man came running out of the deathly still bedroom. "You," he
said, "the closet. Quick!"
The young man quivered his nostrils as he forced his way into a filthy,
smelly closet. The door closed on him. Through the thin wooden panel, he could
hear the door open.
"Who the hell are you?" the strange voice asked in surly tones.
"Lamont Cranston," was the answer. "Who are you, as long as we are
swapping identities?"
"Brett Dane." There was a silence. "Mean anything to you?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Here. Look at my rozzer." That meant nothing to the strained ears in the
closet.
In the room with the bread-knife still stuck in the floor, with the single
yellow twenty-five watt bulb trying to send some light through the fly specks
that defaced it, the two men stood and took each other's measure.
Cranston was looking at the wallet that the man held out. It identified
him as a private detective. Cranston looked from this to the man. He was about
six feet tall, a broken nose instead of making him look tough, gave him rather
agreeably pugnacious air. His broad, high cheek-boned face was impassive.
"What are you doing here?"
"Don't see that it's much of your business, but Ally sent me a frantic
wire to come here."
"I see. Ally what?"
"Ally rat to his enemies, I suppose," the man said, with a crooked smile.
"Albert Mingus is the name."
"Was the name," Cranston said. "He's in the other room."
