They happened at that moment to be nearing the immaculate white-gloved doorman who stands ward over the entrance to the Alexandria.  Johnny looked at him, saw what exclusive hostelry was named upon his cap band, and stopped.  “You can go to your joint where they don’t ask questions,” he said somewhat loftily to Bland.  “I’ll stop here where they don’t have to.”

Bland gasped, but Johnny was already turning in past the immaculate white-gloved one who bowed as Johnny brushed him by.  Bland had only time enough to mutter, “I’ll wait here till you register,” before Johnny disappeared into the subdued elegance where Bland would not venture.  “Till they throw yuh out, you boob,” Bland amended his parting sentence.  “Stoppin’ at the Alexandria—­hnm!”

Johnny, secure in his fresh cleanness and his ignorance of the traditions of the place, strode through the onyx-pillared lobby peopled with well-fed, modish human beings who conversed in modulated voices or bustled in and out, engrossed with affairs which might or might not be of national importance.  At the desk a perfectly groomed, worldly wise aristocrat proffered a pen well inked and gave Johnny what Bland would have termed the double O.

Before he had finished pressing blotter upon “John Ivan Jewel, Tucson, Arizona”, his brain had registered certain details and his smile had attained a certain quality of deference.

“We are glad to have you with us, Mr. Jewel.  Ah—­a room and bath, say on the sixth floor?  Ah—­did you have a good flight, Mr. Jewel?”

Oh, the adaptability of American youth!  “Made it in seven hours continuous flight,” Johnny informed him carelessly.  “Nothing to it.  Yes, the sixth floor will be all right.  Didn’t bring any baggage—­didn’t want to load the plane down.”

And that clerk, to whom baggageless guests are ever objects of suspicion, smiled understandingly and called his favorite boy, and when Johnny’s back was turned, immediately whispered the news that that Arizona flyer who had been so much in the public eye lately, was a guest of the hotel, having flown over in five hours.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FATE MEETS JOHNNY SMILING

Johnny inspected his room and bath on the sixth floor and straightway began to worry about the bill.  The shaded reading lamp by the bed impressed him mightily, as did the smoking set on its own little mahogany stand, and the coat-hangers in the closet.  Johnny was accustomed to stopping in hotels where the furnishings were all but nailed down, and the little conveniences were conspicuously absent.  This, he decided, was a regular place; a home for millionaires.  He doubted very much whether the Thunder Bird was worth the furniture in this one room, and wondered at his own temerity in making free with it.  To brace his courage he must untie the roll of money Bland had given him in Tucson and count the bank notes twice.