The delayed "Flyer" was whistling in when Smith drove the runabout to the station, and he had barely time to back the machine into place in the cab rank and to hurry out to the platform before the train came clattering down over the yard switches. Since all the debarking passengers had to come through the archway exit from the track platform, Smith halted at a point from which he could pass them in review. The day-coach people came first, and after them a smaller contingent from the sleepers. At the tail of the straggling procession Smith saw his man, a thin-faced, hollow-eyed young fellow with an unlighted cigarette hanging from his loose lower lip. Smith marked all the little details: the rakish hat, the flaming-red tie, the russet-leather suitcase with its silver identification tag. Then he placed himself squarely in the young man's way. Jibbey's stare was only momentary. With a broad-mouthed grin he dropped the suitcase and thrust out a hand. "Well, well--Monty, old sport! So this is where you ducked to, is it? By Jove, it's no wonder Bart Macauley couldn't get a line on you! How are tricks, anyway?" Smith was carefully refusing to see the out-stretched hand. And it asked for a sudden tightening of the muscles of self-possession to keep him from looking over his shoulder to see if any of Stanton's shadow men were at hand. "Verda got your telegram, and she asked me to meet you," he rejoined crisply. "Also, to make her excuses for to-night: she has gone to bed." "So that's the way the cat's jumping, is it?" said the imitation black sheep, the grin twisting itself into a leer. "_She_ got a line on you, even if Macauley couldn't. By Gad! I guess I didn't get out here any too soon." Smith ignored the half-jealous pleasantry. "Bring your grip," he directed. "I have an auto here and we'll drive." Being a stranger in a strange city, Jibbey could not know that the hotel was only three squares distant. For the same cause he was entirely unsuspicious when Smith turned the car to the right out of the cab rank and took a street leading to the western suburb. But when the pavements had been left behind, together with all the town lights save an occasional arc-lamp at a crossing, and he was trying for the third time to hold a match to the hanging cigarette, enough ground had been covered to prompt a question. "Hell of a place to call itself a city, if anybody should ask you," he chattered. "Much of this to worry through?" Smith bent lower over the tiller-wheel, advancing the spark and opening the throttle for more gas. "A good bit of it. Didn't you know that Mr. Richlander is out in the hills, buying a mine?"