"I know Hilmer, that's all."
Storch continued his searching scrutiny. Fred felt uneasy—it seemed as if this man opposite him was drawing the innermost secret of his soul to the surface. Finally Storch rubbed his hands together with an air of satisfaction as he said:
"So you know Hilmer!… That makes you all the more interesting… Well, well, let's be moving. I'll put you up for the night. I've got a shelter, such as it is."
Fred rose. He had an impulse to refuse. There was something uncanny about the power of Storch. He was at once fascinating and repulsive. But, on second thought, any shelter was better than a night spent on the streets. He had had two months of buffeting and he was ready for even an indifferent comfort.
He ended by going with his new-found friend. They trotted south along the Embarcadero, hugging the shadows close. This street, once noisy with a coarse, guzzling gayety, was silent. A few disconsolate men hung about the emasculated bars trying to rouse their sluggish spirits on colicky draughts of near beer and grape juice, but the effect was dismal and forbidding. Fred felt a great depression overwhelm him.
He had grown accustomed to the silence of the open spaces, but this silence of the city had a portentous quality which frightened him. It reminded him of that ominous quiet that had settled down on Fairview after that heartbreaking celebration on Christmas Eve. What were men doing with their idle moments? How were they escaping from the drab to-day? Did the crowded lobbies of the sailors' lodging houses spell the final word in the bleak entertainment that intolerance had left them? Upon one of the street corners a Salvation Army lassie harangued an indifferent handful. But there seemed nothing now from which to save these men except monotony, and religion of the fife-and-drum order was offering only a very dreary escape. Did the moral values of negative virtue make men any more admirable? he found himself wondering.
Storch led the way in silence. Finally they turned up toward the slopes of Rincon Hill. A cluster of shacks, clinging crazily to the tawny banks, loomed ahead in the darkness. Storch clambered along a beaten trail and presently he leaped toward the broader confines of a street which opened its arms abruptly to receive them. Fred followed. The thoroughfare upon which he found himself standing was little more than a lane, hedged on either side by crazy structures that nearly all had sprung to rambling life from one-roomed refugee shacks which had dotted the city after the fire and earthquake. Most of them were vine clad and brightened with beds of scarlet geraniums, but the house before which Storch halted rose uncompromisingly from the sun-baked ground without the charity of a covering. Storch turned the key and threw the door open, motioning Fred to enter. Fred did as he was bidden and found himself in a cluttered room, showing harshly in the light streaming in from a near-by street lamp. The air was foul with stale tobacco, refuse, and imprisoned odors of innumerable greasy meals and the sweaty apparel of men who work with their hands.
Storch lighted a lamp. A tumble-down couch stood against the wall, and in an opposite corner a heap of tattered quilts had been flung disdainfully. Tables and chairs and even the floor were piled with papers and cheaply covered books and tattered magazines.
Storch pointed to the couch. "You sleep there to-night. I'll roll up on the floor."
It never occurred to Fred to protest. The two began to shed their outer garments. Fred crawled in between the musty quilts. Storch blew out the lamp, and Fred saw him move toward the quilts in the corner. Without bothering to straighten them out he flung himself down and pulled a covering over him. The light from the street lamp continued to flood the room. Presently Fred heard Storch chuckling.