THE REPROOF COURTEOUS(?)
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 bumped 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-cocked", 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 assault 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 scrapper, 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 assumed 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 Nob 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
muffled his footfalls and so came at last to the proper door, where he
pressed a black button in the center of a brass 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.