better to hear the dinner call Webster left his stateroom door open, and presently a pink-jowled, well-curried, flashily dressed big man, of about Webster's age, passed in the corridor, going toward the head of the train. An instant later a woman's voice said very distinctly:
“I do not know you, sir; I do not wish to know you, and it is loathsome of you to persist in addressing me. If you do not stop your annoying attentions, I shall call the conductor.”
“Ah! Beauty in distress,” John Stuart Webster soliloquized. “I look so much like an Angora goat I might as well butt in.” He stepped to the door of his stateroom. A girl stood in the vestibule, confronting the man who had just passed Webster's door. Webster bowed.
“Madame, or mademoiselle, as the case may be,” he said, “unlike this other male biped, my sole purpose in presuming to address you is to suggest that there is not the slightest necessity for taking this matter up with the conductor. I am here and very much at your service.”
The girl turned—and John Stuart Webster's heart flopped twice in rapid succession, like a trout newly grassed. She was as lovely as a royal flush. Her starry glance began at his miner's boots, travelled up his old, soiled, whipcord trousers, over his light blue chambray shirt and found the man behind the whiskers. She favoured him with a quick, curious scrutiny and a grave, sweet smile. “Thank you so much, sir,” she answered, and passed down the corridor to the observation-car.
“Well, old-timer,” Webster greeted the fellow who had been annoying her, “how about you? What do you think we ought to do about this little affair?”
“The sensible thing would be to do—nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“You might start something you couldn't finish.”
“That's a dare,” Webster declared brightly, “and wasn't it the immortal Huckleberry Finn who remarked that anybody that'd take a dare would suck eggs and steal sheep?” He caressed his beard meditatively. “They say the good Lord made man to His own image and likeness. I take it those were only the specifications for the building complete—the painting and interior decorating, not to mention the furnishings, being let to a sub-contractor.” He was silent a few seconds, appraising his man. “I suppose you commenced operations by moving into her section and asking if she would like to have the window open and enjoy the fresh air. Of course if she had wanted the window open, she would have called the porter. She rebuffed you, but being a persistent devil, you followed her into the observation-car, and in all probability you ogled her at luncheon and ruined her appetite. And just now, when you met her in this vestibule, you doubtless jostled her, begged her pardon and without waiting to be introduced asked her to have dinner with you this evening.”
“Well?” the fellow echoed belligerently.
“It's all bad form. You shouldn't try to make a mash on a lady. I don't know who she is, of course, but she's not common; she's travelling without a chaperon, I take it, and for the sake of the mother that bore me I always respect and protect a good woman and whale hell out of those that do not.”
He reached inside his stateroom and pressed the bell. The porter arrived on the run.
“George,” said Mr. Webster, “in a few minutes we're due at Smithville. If my memory serves me aright, we stop five minutes for water and orders.”
“Yassah.”
“Remain right here and let me off as soon as the train comes to a stop.”
When the train slid to a grinding halt and the porter opened the car door, Webster pointed.
“Out!” he said. “This is no nice place to pull off a scrap.”
“See here, neighbour, I don't want to have any trouble with you——”
“I know it. All the same, you're going to have it—or come with me to that young lady and beg her pardon.”
There are some things in this world which the most craven of men will not do—and the vanity of that masher forbade acceptance of Webster's alternative. He preferred to fight, but—he did not purpose being thrashed. He resolved on strategy.
“All right. I'll apologize,” he declared, and started forward as if to pass Webster in the vestibule, on his way to the observation-car, whither the subject of his annoying attentions had gone. Two steps brought him within striking distance of his enemy, and before Webster could dodge, a sizzling righthanded blow landed on his jaw and set him back on his haunches in the vestibule.
It was almost a knockout—almost, but not quite. As Webster's body struck the floor the big automatic came out of the holster; swinging in a weak circle, it covered the other.
“That was a daisy,” Webster mumbled. “If you move before my head clears, I'll put four bullets into you before you reach the corridor.”
He waited about a minute; then with the gun he pointed to the car door, and the masher stepped out. Webster handed the porter his gun and followed; two minutes later he returned, dragging his assailant by the collar. Up the steps he jerked the big battered hulk and tossed it in the corner of the vestibule, just as the girl came through the car, making for the diner up ahead.
Again she favoured him with that calm, grave, yet vitally interested gaze, nodded appreciatively, made as if to pass on, changed her mind, and said very gravely: “You are—a very courtly gentleman, sir.”
He bowed. There was nothing else to do, nothing that he could say, under the circumstances; to use his chivalry as a wedge to open an acquaintance never occurred to him—but his whiskers did occur to him. Hastily he backed into his stateroom and closed the door; presently he rose and surveyed himself critically in the small mirror over the washstand.
“No, Johnny,” he murmured, “we can't go into the diner now. We're too blamed disreputable. We were bad enough before that big swine hung the shanty on our right eye, but whatever our physical and personal feelings, far be it from us to parade our iridescent orb in public. Besides, one look at that queen is enough to do us for the remainder of our natural life, and a second look, minus a proper introduction, would only drive us into a suicide's grave. That's a fair sample of our luck, Johnny. It rains duck soup—and we're there like a Chinaman—with chopsticks; and on the only day in the history of the human race, here I am with a marvellous black eye, a dislocated thumb, four skinned knuckles, and a grouch, while otherwise looking like a cross between Rip Van Winkle and a hired man.” He sighed, rang for the porter and told him to send a waiter for his order, since he would fain break his fast in the privacy of his stateroom. And when the waiter came for the order, such was Mr. Webster's mental perturbation that ham and eggs were furthest from his thoughts. He ordered a steak with French fried potatoes.
CHAPTER II
JOHN STUART WEBSTER passed a restless night. Sleep came to him in hourly installments, from which he would rouse to ask himself whether it was worth while to continue to go through the motions of living, or alight at the next station, seek a lonely and unfrequented spot and there surrender
