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He stabbed the protuberant vest with the automatic, and laughed into the scared fat face of the beefy man — laughed with a menacing flash of even teeth and dark slitted eyes. Then he picked up his hat, pocketed the pistol, and vanished from Steve’s sight. The fat man sat down.

Steve went on down to the street.

Steve unearthed the garage to which the Ford had been taken, found a greasy mechanic who answered to the name of Pete, and was told that Whiting’s automobile would be in condition to move under its own power within two days.

“A beautiful snootful you had yesterday,” Pete grinned.

Steve grinned back and went on out. He went down to the telegraph office, next door to the Izzard Hotel, pausing for a moment on the sidewalk to look at a glowing, cream-colored Vauxhall-Velox roadster that stood at the curb — as out of place in this grimy factory town as a harlequin opal in a grocer’s window.

In the doorway of the telegraph office Steve paused again, abruptly.

Behind the counter was a girl in tan flannel — the girl he had nearly run down twice the previous afternoon — the “Vallance girl” who had refrained from adding to justice’s account against Steve Threefall. In front of the counter, leaning over it, talking to her with every appearance of intimacy was one of the two men he had seen from the staircase window half an hour before — the slender dandy in gray who had slapped the other’s face and threatened him with an automatic.

The girl looked up, recognised Steve, and stood very erect. He took off his hat, and advanced smiling.

“I’m awfully sorry about yesterday,” he said. “I’m a crazy fool when I —”

“Do you wish to send a telegram?” she asked frigidly.

“Yes,” Steve said; “I also wish to —”

“There are blanks and pencils on the desk near the window,” and she turned her back on him.

Steve felt himself colouring, and since he was one of the men who habitually grin when at a loss, he grinned now, and found himself looking into the dark eyes of the man in gray.

That one smiled back under his little brown moustache, and said:

“Quite a time you had yesterday. ”

“Quite,” Steve agreed, and went to the table the girl had indicated. He wrote his telegram:

Henry Harris

Harris Hotel, Whitetufts:

Arrived right side up, but am in hock. Wire me two hundred dollars. Will be back Saturday.

Threefall. T.

But he did not immediately get up from the desk. He sat there holding the piece of paper in his fingers, studying the man and girl, who were again engaged in confidential conversation over the counter. Steve studied the girl most.

She was quite a small girl, no more than five feet in height, if that; and she had that peculiar rounded slenderness which gives a deceptively fragile appearance. Her face was an oval of skin whose fine whiteness had thus far withstood the grimy winds of Izzard; her nose just missed being upturned, her violet-black eyes just missed being too theatrically large, and her black-Brown hair just missed being too bulky for the small head it crowned; but in no respect did she miss being as beautiful as a figure from a Monticelli canvas.

All these things Steve Threefall, twiddling his telegram in sun-brown fingers, considered and as he considered them he came to see the pressing necessity of having his apologies accepted. Explain it as you will — he carefully avoided trying to explain it to himself — the thing was there. One moment there was nothing, in the four continents he knew, of any bothersome importance to Steve Threefall; the next moment he was under an inescapable compulsion to gain the favour of this small person in tan flannel with brown ribbons at wrists and throat.