For the few minutes it took the red roadster to slip under the green summits of Twin Peaks and by a maze of boulevards debouch at length upon Valencia and so into the busy length of Market Street their talk ran to commonplaces. Thompson placed himself unreservedly in Sophie"s hands. He had to reach an express office on lower Market, get his things, and proceed thence to the house where he had roomed all winter. Since it suited Miss Carr"s book to convey him to the first point, he accepted the gift of her company gladly. So in the fullness of time they came into the downtown press of traffic, among which, he observed, Sophie steered her machine like a veteran.
At Third and Market the traffic whistle blocked them with the front wheels over the safety line that guided the flow of cross-street pedestrians, and the point man, crabbed perhaps from a long trick amidst that roaring maze of vehicles, motioned autocratically for her to back up.
Sophie muttered impatiently under her breath and went into reverse.
Behind her the traffic was piling up, each machine stealing every inch of vantage for the go-ahead signal, crowding up wheel to wheel, the nose of one thrusting at the rear fender of the other. On one side of Sophie rose the base of a safety station for street-car boarders. Between her car and the curb a long-snouted gray touring-car was edging in. And as she backed under the imperative command of the traffic officer, one rear hub clinked against the hind fender of the other, jarring both cars a little, dinting the gray one"s fender, marring the glossy finish.
A chauffeur in a peaked cap drove the gray machine. He looked across at Sophie, scowling. He was young and red-faced, a pugnacious-looking individual.
"Back to the country, Jane, an" practice on the farm wagon," he snarled out of one corner of his mouth. "Yuh drive like a hick, yuh do."
"Talk civil to a woman," Thompson snapped back at him, "or keep your mouth shut."
The chauffeur bestowed upon him a rancorous glare. His sharp, ferret eyes gleamed. Then he deliberately spat upon the impeccably shining red hood of Sophie"s roadster.
A scant arm"s length separated him from Thompson. Thompson bridged that gap with his feet still on the running-board of the roadster. He moved so quickly that the chauffeur had no chance. He did try to slide out from behind the wheel and his fist doubled and drew back, but Thompson"s work-hardened fingers closed about his neck, and the powerful arms back of those clutching hands twisted the man out of all position to strike any sort of blow. He yanked the chauffeur"s head out over the side of the car, struck him one open-handed slap that was like an earnest cluff from a sizable bear, lifted again and banged the man"s face down on the controls on his wheels, then pushed him back into his seat, limp and disheveled, all the insolent defiance knocked out of him.
Thompson stood on the running board, panting a little, the blaze of a quick anger bright in his blue eyes, and he became aware of two men in the rear seat of the gray car, gazing at him in open-mouthed astonishment. One was fat and long past forty, well fed, well dressed, a prosperous citizen. The other was a slim youngster in the early twenties, astonishingly like his older companion as to feature.
Thompson looked at them, and back at the cowed driver who was feeling his neck and face with shaky fingers. Just then three things happened--simultaneously. The traffic whistle blew. The younger man opened his mouth and uttered, "I say--" Sophie plucked at Thompson"s arm, crying "Sit down, sit down."
Thompson was still fumbling the catch on the door when they swept over the cross street and raced down the next block. He looked back. The gray car was hidden somewhere in a rolling phalanx of other motors. The traffic had split and flowed about and past it, stalled there doubtless while the red-faced chauffeur wiped the blood out of his eyes and wondered if a street car had struck him.
"Do you habitually reprove ill-bred persons in that vigorous manner?"
He became aware of Sophie speaking. He looked at her. So far as he could gather from her profile she was quite unperturbed, making her way among the traffic that is always like a troubled sea between Third and the Ferry Building.
"No," he replied diffidently. "I daresay I"d be in jail or the hospital most of the time if I did. Still, that was rather a rank case. I"m not sorry I b.u.mped him. He"ll be civil to the next woman he meets."
What he did not attempt to explain to Sophie, a matter he scarcely fathomed himself, was his precipitancy, this going off "half-c.o.c.ked", as he put it. He wasn"t given to quick bursts of temper. It was as if he had been holding himself in and the self-contained pressure had grown acute when the insolent chauffeur presented himself as a relief valve.
He felt a little ashamed now.
Sophie swung the roadster in to the curb before the express office.
Thompson got out.
"Good-by till this evening, then," he said. "I"ll be there if the police don"t get me."
"If they do," she smiled, "telephone and dad will come down and bail you out. Good-by, Mr. Thompson."
Ten minutes or so later he emerged from the express office with a suitcase, a canvas bag, and a roll of blankets. He had no false pride about people seeing him with his worldly goods upon his back, so to speak, wherefore he crossed the street and trudged half a block to a corner where he could catch a car that would carry him out Market to his old rooming place.
And, since this was a day in which events trod upon each other"s heels to reach him, it befell that as he loitered on the curb a gray touring car rolled up, stopped, and a short, stout man emerging therefrom disappeared hurriedly within the portals of an office building.
Thompson"s gaze rested speculatively on the machine. Gray cars were common enough. But without a doubt this was the same vehicle. The chauffeur in the peaked cap was not among those present--but Thompson could take oath on the other two. The young man sat behind the steering wheel.
He, too, it presently transpired, was spurred by recognition. His roving eyes alighted upon Thompson with a reminiscent gleam. He edged over in his seat. Thompson stood almost at the front fender.
"I say," the man in the car addressed him bluntly, "weren"t you in a red roadster back at Third and Market about fifteen or twenty minutes ago?"
"I was," Thompson admitted.
Was he to be arrested forthwith on a charge of a.s.sault and battery?
Policemen were plentiful enough in that quarter. All one had to do was crook his finger. People could not be expected to take kindly to having their chauffeur mauled and disabled like that. But Thompson stood his ground indifferently.
"Well, I must say," the young man drawled, producing a cigarette case as he spoke, "you squashed Pebbles with neatness and despatch, and Pebbles was supposed to be some sc.r.a.pper, too. What do you weigh?"
Thompson laughed outright. He had expected a complaint, perhaps prosecution. He was handed a compliment.
"I don"t know," he smiled. "About a hundred and eighty-five, I think."
"You must be pretty fit to handle a man like that," the other observed.
"The beggar had it coming, all right. He gets an overnight jag, and is surly all the next day. I was going to apologize to the lady, but you were too quick for me. By the way, are you a working-man--or a capitalist in disguise?"
Before Thompson quite decided how he should answer this astonishingly personal inquiry, the young man"s companion strode out of the lobby and entered the car. At least he had his hand on the open door and one foot on the running board. And there he halted and turned about at something his son said--Thompson a.s.sumed they were father and son. The likeness of feature was too well-defined to permit of any lesser relation.
The older man took his foot off the running board, and made a deliberate survey of Thompson.
"Just a second, Fred," he muttered, and took a step toward Thompson. His eyes traveled swiftly from Thompson"s face down over the suitcase and blanket roll, and came back to that deliberate matching of glances.
"Do you happen to be looking for a position that requires energy, ability, and a fair command of the English language?" he demanded abruptly.
"Yes," Thompson answered briefly.
He wondered what was coming. Were they going to offer him the chauffeur"s job? Did they require a bruiser to drive the gray car?
"Know anything about motors?"
"Not the first principles, even." Thompson declared himself frankly. He did possess a little such knowledge, but held a little knowledge to be a dangerous admission.
"So much the better," the stout man commented.
He fished out a cardcase, and handed his card to Thompson.
"Call on me at ten o"clock to-morrow morning," he said briskly. "I"ll make you a proposition."
He did not permit inquiry into his motive or anything else, in fact, for he got quickly into the car and it started off instantly, leaving Mr.
Wesley Thompson, a little bewildered by the rapidity of these proceedings, staring at the card, which read:
John P. Henderson, Inc.
Van Ness at Potter Groya Motors
A westbound street car bore down on the corner. Thompson gave over reflecting upon this latest turn of affairs, gathered up his things, boarded the car, and was set off a few minutes later near the Globe Rooms.
At precisely 8 p.m. he arrived at the address Sophie had given him and found it to be an apartment house covering half a block, an enormous structure clinging upon the slope which dips from n.o.b Hill down to the heart of the city. An elevator shot him silently aloft to the fifth floor. As silently the elevator man indicated the location of Apartment 509. The whole place seemed pitched to that subdued note, as if it were a sanctuary from the clash and clamor without its walls.
Thompson walked down a hushed corridor over a velvet carpet that m.u.f.fled his footfalls and so came at last to the proper door, where he pressed a black b.u.t.ton in the center of a bra.s.s plate. The door opened almost upon the instant. A maid eyed him interrogatively. He mentioned his name.
"Oh yes," the maid answered. "This way, please."
She relieved him of his hat and led him down a short, dusky hall into a bright-windowed room, in which, from the depths of two capacious leather chairs, Sophie and her father rose to greet him.