He quickened his step. There was a man standing in the doorway of the suite. Instantly, from the side view Ryder obtained of his face, he knew him to be the stranger who had come last to the hotel on this fateful evening. "The bungling fool!" thought John Ryder. "Is he going from room to room in this hotel looking for his friends? Maybe he is not honest. The disturbed state of the hotel guests would open very easily the way to business for an industrious burglar." "I--I don't know you," Ruth said just as Ryder reached the spot. She stood within the room, clinging with both hands to the edge of the door and staring at the stranger with such a wild look in her eyes that her husband was frightened. He turned on the man furiously. "What do you want? What are you disturbing this lady for?" "I--I beg your pardon," stammered the stranger, backing away from both John Ryder and the open door of his suite, his face now displaying nothing but pain and anxiety. "I have made a mistake--a terrible mistake." "Oh, I am so glad you have come," Ruth said quickly to Ryder. "I--I thought you were lost--or something had happened. And then this man came----" She was still staring at the stranger with eyes in which lurked actual terror. Ryder's fierce aspect seemed to trouble the strange man. "I--I beg your pardon--and the lady's," he murmured. "I thought I was acquainted with her. It--it is a mistake." "I never saw him in my life!" gasped Ruth. "It's all right. Mistakes will happen," said Ryder, and entered the room, shutting the door abruptly in the man's face. He caught Ruth quickly in his arms with a sort of fierceness this time that was his man-way of claiming possession, as well as a desire to defend her from annoyance. "Were you frightened, dearie?" he asked. "Yes. He--he startled me so. He is a strange looking man. Do you think him quite--quite right?" "Not right to come bungling up here and disturbing you," Ryder responded, tenderly. She blushed, slipping out of his arms suddenly. "Here, dear," she said softly. "I have a visitor." Ryder looked down the room and saw for the first time a large, smiling woman sitting in a chair beyond the line of half-unpacked trunks. She was a person whom he knew he had never seen before, and he was not particularly happy to see her now. She was a richly dressed--indeed a gaudily dressed--person wearing many jewels and lacking that quiet demeanor and appearance that Ryder admired most in womankind. Nevertheless, he walked in with as good a grace as he could summon while Ruth introduced him. "This is my husband, Mrs. Judson," she said, and there was a thrill of pride in her sweet voice that delighted the man. "Mrs. Judson has been telling me how dreadfully this Mr. Bangs, the hotel manager, is behaving. Are they actually going to close the hotel? Mrs. Judson is all upset about it. Being alone here with only a maid, she doesn't know what to do."