remember so much as one of the blows that had been dealt me. I recite this to indicate the utter depths of my "lostness." A man, even a victim of amnesia, should remember when he has been beaten half to death.

"I don't know anything about myself," I said.

"Now don't go a-trying that amnesia gag on us," said one of the men in plainclothes.

Just then another party entered the darkroom, which was dark everywhere but where I sat under blazing electrics.

"He's not Dean Hale, has no record here at all," said the newcomer. "His prints don't match with Hale's."

All I knew now was that I wasn't somebody named Dean Hale.

"He has to be somebody," said a plainclothes man, "Dean Hale or not—and when we find out who, the fact will also remain that he killed Marian Slade."

How unreal the whole thing was to me. I realized no danger in myself in these accusations. I forgot blows after they had been struck. I think I even forgot to feel the pain of them. Finally my inquisitors gave it up.

"We'll make a check in Missing Persons," someone said.

They didn't find me there, either, though they held me three days while they checked. I forgot the three days, each of them, until long after—until I had the pictures clearly enough in mind that I could set down the facts as I am now doing. The police finally decided I wasn't a murderer, but that I was "missing," actually and mentally, an amnesia victim who could not be aroused. That's where Jan Rober, one of the plainclothes men came in.

"A touch of shock treatment might help you," he told me, visiting me alone and somewhat mysteriously in my cell. "There is a laboratory near Westchester I'm interested in. Modern equipment, far in advance of science. Nobody knows about it. Sometimes I take missing persons there, to help them remember. The surgeons, doctors, scientists there, are my friends."

"They pay you to find people who are lost, for whom no one is likely to inquire, and take them there?" I asked, wondering from what deep well of verbal knowledge I dredged the words, and the fear that inspired them. Jan Rober's eyes narrowed.

"You're accusing me of something?" he said softly.

"I don't know," I said, "but it just 

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