“Well, what’s he charged with?” His voice was thin, harshly metallic. He kept his feet on the table.
The marshal drew a deep breath, and recited:
“Driving on the wrong side of the street, exceeding the speed limit, driving while under the influence of liquor, driving without a driver’s license, endangering the lives of pedestrians by taking his hands off the wheel, and parking improperly — on the sidewalk up against the bank.”
The marshal took another breath, and added, with manifest regret:
“There was a charge of attempted assault, too, but that Vallance girl won’t appear, so that’ll have to be dropped.”
The justice’s bright eyes turned upon Steve.
“What’s your name?” he growled.
“Steve Threefall.”
“Is that your real name?” the marshal asked.
“Of course it is,” the justice snapped. “You don’t think anybody’d be damn fool enough to give a name like that unless it was his, do you?” Then to Steve: “What have you got to say — guilty or not?”
“I was a little—”
“Are you guilty or not?”
“Oh, I suppose I did—”
“That’s enough! You’re fined a hundred and fifty dollars and costs. The costs are fifteen dollars and eighty cents, making a total of a hundred and sixty-five dollars and eighty cents. Will you pay it or will you go to jail?”
“I’ll pay it if I’ve got it,” Steve said, turning to the marshal. “You took my money. Have I got that much?”
The marshal nodded his massive head.
“You have,” he said, “exactly — to the nickel. Funny it should have come out like that — huh?”
“Yes — funny,” Steve repeated.
While the justice of the peace was making out a receipt for the fine, the marshal restored Steve’s watch, tobacco and matches, pocket-knife, keys, and last of all the black walking-stick. The big man weighed the stick in his hand and examined it closely before he gave it up. It was thick and of ebony, but heavy even for that wood, with a balanced weight that hinted at loaded ferrule and knob. Except for a space the breadth of a man’s hand in its middle, the stick was roughened, cut and notched with the marks of hard use — marks that much careful polishing had failed to remove or conceal. The unscarred hand’s-breadth was of a softer black than the rest — as soft a black as the knob — as if it had known much contact with a human palm.
“Not a bad weapon in a pinch,” the marshal said meaningly as he handed the stick to its owner. Steve took it with the grasp a man reserves for a favorite and constant companion.
“Not bad,” he agreed. “What happened to the flivver?”
“It’s in the garage around the corner on Main Street. Pete said it wasn’t altogether ruined, and he thinks he can patch it up if you want.”
The justice held out the receipt.
“Am I all through here now?” Steve asked.
“I hope so,” Judge Denvir said sourly.
“Both of us,” Steve echoed. He put on his hat, tucked the black stick under his arm, nodded to the big marshal, and left the room.
Steve Threefall went down the wooden stairs toward the street in as cheerful a frame of mind as his body — burned out inwardly with white liquor and outwardly by a day’s scorching desert-riding — would permit. That justice had emptied his pockets of every last cent disturbed him little. That, he knew, was the way of justice everywhere with the stranger, and he had left the greater part of his money with the hotel proprietor in Whitetufts. He had escaped a jail sentence, and he counted himself lucky. He would wire Harris to send him some of his money, wait here until the Ford was repaired, and then drive back to Whitetufts — but not on a whisky ration this time.
“You will not!” a voice cried in his ear.
He jumped, and then laughed at his alcohol-jangled nerves. The words had not been meant for him. Beside him, at a turning of the stairs, was an open window, and opposite it, across a narrow alley, a window in another building was open. This window belonged to an office in which two men stood facing each other across a flat-topped desk.
One of them was middle-aged and beefy, in a black broadcloth suit out of which a white-vested stomach protruded. His face was purple with rage. The man who faced him was younger — a man of perhaps thirty, with a small dark mustache, finely chiseled features, and satiny brown hair. His slender athlete’s body was immaculately clothed in gray suit, gray shirt, gray and silver tie, and on the desk before him lay a Panama hat with gray band. His face was as white as the other’s was purple.
The beefy man spoke — a dozen words pitched too low to catch.
The younger man slapped the speaker viciously across the face with an open hand — a hand that then flashed back to its owner’s coat and flicked out a snub-nosed automatic pistol.
“You big lard-can,” the younger man cried, his voice sibilant; “you’ll lay off or I’ll spoil your vest for you!”
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, recognized 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 coloring, 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 mustache, 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.
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.