“You ain’t?  Good golly!  What you been doing all day?”

The reporter who had ceased to be a reporter checked a smile while he picked up gloves and cane and opened the door.

“Say!  If I told you all I’ve been doing, old man, you’d think flying from Tucson is a snap!  It’s a merry life we newspaper men lead.  Not.”

They were at the elevator before it occurred to Johnny that he was deviating considerably from his intended line of conduct.  He remembered that Bland had promised to wait for him outside the door.  He was not at all certain that Bland would do so in the face of temptations,—­such as hunger and thirst,—­but it seemed a shabby trick to play him nevertheless.  Instinct warned him that Bland could not be included in the invitation.  Bland was indefinably but inexorably out of it.  This fellow—­and there Johnny remembered that he did not know the name of his host, and that he had but a moment ago all but threatened to throw him down six flights of winding stairs built all of steel or marble or some hard fireproof substance that would make painful tobogganing.  He eyed askance the nameless one and was impressed anew by the absolute correctness of his attire.  He wondered that the fellow was not ashamed to be seen in public with him.

“My name, by the way, is Lowell.  Cliff Lowell.”  This was in the elevator.  “The desk clerk will tell you as much as any one need know about me, if you feel the need of credentials.”  The elevator halted, and the human automaton who operated it slid open the door.  “I don’t often yield to these sudden impulses myself.  But life is a bore—­and you are different.  I somehow feel as if we are going to hit it off all right together.  At any rate, I am willing to gamble on the acquaintance for one evening.  I take it you are in the same boat—­eh?”

“Sure,” said Johnny, flattered without in the least knowing what it was that warmed him toward Cliff Lowell so suddenly.  “I suppose I ought to—­my mechanic was to wait outside for me—­”

Cliff Lowell lifted an eyebrow and smiled a little smile.  “You must have a very well-trained mechanic if he really would wait outside at this time in the evening.”  He bowed and lifted his hat to an impressive old lady in some glittery, lacy kind of gown, and Johnny bowed also and blushed because a girl just beyond the old lady gave him a slant-eyed glance and the shadow of a smile.  Ten steps farther a fierce looking man with a wide, white frontage and a high silk hat slowed his pace and cried, “Why, hello, Cliff!” in a manner not at all fierce.  Between there and the entrance Johnny counted seven important looking persons who recognized his host as an acquaintance.  He began to wonder at his own presumption in receiving one of Los Angeles’ leading citizens as he had received Cliff Lowell.  It was with a conscious effort that he maintained his attitude of sturdy independence.