“No; it isn’t,” replied Cressey promptly.  “If it is, he’s in the wrong pew.  Miss Raleigh is straight as they make ’em, from all I hear.”

“She looks it,” admitted Banneker.

“At that, she’s in a rather sporty lot.  Do you know that chap three seats to her left?”

Banneker considered the diner, a round-faced, high-colored, youthful man of perhaps thirty-five, with a roving and merry eye.  “No,” he answered.  “I never saw him before.”

“That’s Del Eyre,” remarked Cressey casually, and appearing not to look at Banneker.

“A friend of yours?” The indifference of the tone indicated to his companion either that Banneker did not identify Delavan Eyre by his marriage, or that he maintained extraordinary control over himself, or that the queer, romantic stories of Io Welland’s “passion in the desert” were gross exaggerations.  Cressey inclined to the latter belief.

“Not specially,” he answered the question.  “He belongs to a couple of my clubs.  Everybody likes Del; even Mrs. Del.  But his pace is too swift for me.  Just at present he is furnishing transportation, sixty horse-power, for Tarantina, the dancer who is featured in Betty Raleigh’s show.”

“Is she over there with them?”

“Oh, no.  She wouldn’t be.  It isn’t as sporty as all that.”  He rose to shake hands with a short, angular young man, dressed to a perfection as accurate as Banneker’s own, and excelling him in one distinctive touch, a coat-flower of gold-and-white such as no other in New York could wear, since only in one conservatory was that special orchid successfully grown.  By it Banneker recognized Poultney Masters, Jr., the son and heir of the tyrannous old financier who had for years bullied and browbeaten New York to his wayward old heart’s content.  In his son there was nothing of the bully, but through the amiability of manner Banneker could feel a quiet force.  Cressey introduced them.

“We’re just having coffee,” said Banneker.  “Will you join us?”

“Thank you; I must go back to my party.  I came over to express my personal obligation to you for cleaning out that gang of wharf-rats.  My boat anchors off there.  I hope to see you aboard her sometime.”

“You owe me no thanks,” returned Banneker good-humoredly.  “What I did was to save my own precious skin.”

“The effect was the same.  After this the rats will suspect every man of being a Banneker in disguise, and we shall have no more trouble.”

“You see!” remarked Cressey triumphantly as Masters went away.  “I told you you’d arrived.”

“Do you count a word of ordinary courtesy as so much?” inquired Banneker, surprised and amused.

“From Junior?  I certainly do.  No Masters ever does anything without having figured out its exact meaning in advance.”

“And what does this mean?” asked the other, still unimpressed.

“For one thing, that the Masters influence will be back of you, if the police try to put anything over.  For another, that you’ve got the broadest door to society open to you, if Junior follows up his hint about the yacht.”