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“Ever been to our fair young city before?” this melancholy individual asked next. His voice held a monotonous rhythm that was not unpleasant to the ear.

“No, this is my first time. ”

The thin man nodded ironically.

“You’ll like it if you stay,” he said. “It’s very interesting. ”

“What’s it all about?” Steve asked, finding himself mildly intrigued by his benchmate.

“Soda niter. You scoop it up off the desert, and boil and otherwise cook it, and sell it to fertilizer manufacturers, and nitric acid manufacturers, and any other kind of manufacturers who can manufacture something out of soda niter. The factory in which, for which, and from which you do all this lies yonder, beyond the railroad tracks. ”

He waved a lazy arm down the street, to where a group of square concrete buildings shut out the desert at the end of the thoroughfare.

“Suppose you don’t play with this soda?” Steve asked, more to keep the thin man talking than to satisfy any thirst for local knowledge. “What do you do then?”

The thin man shrugged his sharp shoulders.

“That depends,” he said, “on who you are. If you’re Dave Brackett” — he wiggled a finger at the red bank across the street — “you gloat over your mortgages, or whatever it is a banker does; if you’re Grant Fernie, and too big for a man without being quite big enough for a horse, you pin a badge on your bosom and throw rough-riding strangers into the can until they sober up; or if you’re Larry Ormsby, and your old man owns the soda works, then you drive trick cars from across the pond” — nodding at the cream Vauxhall — “and spend your days pursuing beautiful telegraph operators. But I take it that you’re broke, and have just wired for money, and are waiting for the more or less doubtful results. Is that it?”

“It is,” Steve answered absent-mindedly. So the dandy in gray was named Larry Ormsby and was the factory owner’s son.

The thin man drew in his feet and stood up on them.

“In that case it’s lunchtime, and my name is Roy Kamp, and I’m hungry, and I don’t like to eat alone, and I’d be glad to have you face the greasy dangers of a meal at the Finn’s with me. ”

Steve got up and held out his hand.

“I’ll be glad to,” he said. “The coffee I had for breakfast could stand company. My name’s Steve Threefall. ”

They shook hands, and started up the street together. Coming toward them were two men in earnest conversation; one of them was the beefy man whose face Larry Ormsby had slapped. Steve waited until they had passed, and then questioned Kamp casually:

“And who are those prominent-looking folks?”

“The little round one in the chequered college-boy suit is Conan Elder, real estate, insurance, and securities. The Wallingford-looking personage at his side is W. W. himself — the town’s founder, owner, and whatnot — W. W. Ormsby, the Hon. Larry’s papa. ”

The scene in the office, with its slapping of a face and flourish of a pistol, had been a family affair, then; a matter between father and son, with the son in the more forcible rôle. Steve, walking along with scant attention just now for the words Kamp’s baritone voice was saying, felt a growing dissatisfaction in the memory of the girl and Larry Ormsby talking over the counter with their heads close together.

The Finn’s lunchroom was little more than a corridor squeezed in between a poolroom and a hardware store, of barely sufficient width for a counter and a row of revolving stools. Only one customer was there when the two men entered. “Hello, Mr. Rymer,” said Kamp.