The Man Without a Memory

by Arthur W. Marchmont

"I didn't ask you that."

"And if I do help you?"

He put his fat finger to his lips. "Mum about that Hanover business."

"And if I don't?"

He paused, squinting hard at me. "I think you will."

I affected to consider the proposal. "But why take this roundabout trouble to get her? If you want to marry her, why not ask her?"

That touched his Teutonic sense of humour and he burst into loud and evidently genuine laughter. "Why didn't you marry Anna Hilden? Because you could get her without, wasn't it? Same here, of course."

"It comes to this, then," I said after a pause. "You think you know that I played the traitor in that Hanover business in a way that renders me liable to be shot; but that you're willing to hush it up if I'll help to put Miss Caldicott into your power. That about it?"

"Put it how you like," he growled, not relishing the bald statement. "But you'd better toe the line, my friend, and at once. Now, what are you going to do?"

"I'll toe the line, von Erstein."