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just ‘that man.’ ”
    I suppose it had seemed to her a curious emission; however, names are so far accidents that they seem to count for but little in the scheme of things. And I’ve rather lost the habit of giving my true name to every one I meet in passing through this world as if I were some article of merchandise that needed to be perpetually tagged, ticketed and labeled. But there is no reason why I should not give it.
    “My name is Partridge, John Partridge,” I said as I released her hand.

Undue Influence
    I WASN’T at all surprized when Sanderson came to me that morning on the after deck of the Antioch and told me that he’d been stripped of everything he possessed by Damron. Nor, for that matter, was I surprized at the use of the words, “feelin’ of wildness,” in describing his sensations during the process.
    Very early on the trip I’d noticed the two men, and I’d judged their acquaintance to be one of potential mischief. It was because of that I struck up my friendship with Sanderson, who was a retired rancher, honest, likable, far from stupid but of a rather nervous and fluctuating temperament. Thus I learned that he’d recently lost his wife by death and had also recently been enriched by the discovery of oil on his ranch and its subsequent sale.
    Which latter fact, I thought, well confirmed me in my suspicions concerning his traveling-companion. Damron was a large man of almost too imposing presence, well-groomed and impeccably clothed. He was affable, a very fluent talker and unquestionably intelligent, but his smile was purely mechanical and very peculiar, a mere twisting upward of the corners of his lips. His smile never affected his eyes or any of the upper part of his face—it was clearly a danger mark.
    Sometimes I felt that Sanderson himself was none too trustful of Damron—but why, then, the apparent friendship?
    One evening—San Francisco was then five days astern—I leaned on the rail in front of the door of Sanderson’s stateroom, facing the prow. The sunset over the prow was magnificent, like a great dusky conflagration, and the Antioch was moving toward it quietly, as if she liked pushing through the low waves. From inside Sanderson’s cabin, which he had to himself, came the incessant murmur of a rather musical masculine voice—Damron’s voice.
    Now, while I was listening to that voice—the words, of course, were indistinguishable—I happened to glance downward, and I saw near my left foot, just at the edge of the scupper, something that was very peculiar to find on the deck of a ship five days at sea. The find had no meaning to me then, but I mentally filed it away, after a fashion I had. I remembered that the only wood nearby was that in the deck itself and in the walls of the staterooms. Some one had been boring either one or the other, for here were a dozen or so rounded flakes just as they had come from the auger or bit, whichever had been used. Some one had bored a hole and had thought to throw the residue overboard; the wind had blown these few flakes back.
    My rather idle speculations were interrupted by the cessation of Damron’s voice and the opening of the door of Sanderson’s stateroom.
    I’d placed myself so I could glance at the two men as they came out without turning my head. Sanderson came first, his wrinkled old face looking a little excited. Damron followed, put out his hand and opened the door of his own stateroom, which was next forward to Sanderson’s. Smiling his peculiar smile, he nodded to Sanderson, shot him what I took to be a cautioning glance and disappeared within.
    Sanderson glanced toward me, but my attention was apparently forward. So he stood for a moment hesitant, the salt air whipping color into his rather pallid cheeks and flapping his loosely fitting black suit around his shrunken but still wiry old frame. Then he glanced at the door through which Damron had just passed, and I saw a queer change come over him.
    His expression