“Just a second, Fred,” he muttered, and took a step toward Thompson.  His eyes traveled swiftly from Thompson’s face down over the suitcase and blanket roll, and came back to that deliberate matching of glances.

“Do you happen to be looking for a position that requires energy, ability, and a fair command of the English language?” he demanded abruptly.

“Yes,” Thompson answered briefly.

He wondered what was coming.  Were they going to offer him the chauffeur’s job?  Did they require a bruiser to drive the gray car?

“Know anything about motors?”

“Not the first principles, even.”  Thompson declared himself frankly.  He did possess a little such knowledge, but held a little knowledge to be a dangerous admission.

“So much the better,” the stout man commented.

He fished out a cardcase, and handed his card to Thompson.

“Call on me at ten o’clock to-morrow morning,” he said briskly.  “I’ll make you a proposition.”

He did not permit inquiry into his motive or anything else, in fact, for he got quickly into the car and it started off instantly, leaving Mr. Wesley Thompson, a little bewildered by the rapidity of these proceedings, staring at the card, which read: 

    John P. Henderson, Inc.

    Van Ness at Potter Groya Motors

A westbound street car bore down on the corner.  Thompson gave over reflecting upon this latest turn of affairs, gathered up his things, boarded the car, and was set off a few minutes later near the Globe Rooms.

At precisely 8 p.m. he arrived at the address Sophie had given him and found it to be an apartment house covering half a block, an enormous structure clinging upon the slope which dips from Nob Hill down to the heart of the city.  An elevator shot him silently aloft to the fifth floor.  As silently the elevator man indicated the location of Apartment 509.  The whole place seemed pitched to that subdued note, as if it were a sanctuary from the clash and clamor without its walls.  Thompson walked down a hushed corridor over a velvet carpet that muffled his footfalls and so came at last to the proper door, where he pressed a black button in the center of a brass plate.  The door opened almost upon the instant.  A maid eyed him interrogatively.  He mentioned his name.

“Oh yes,” the maid answered.  “This way, please.”

She relieved him of his hat and led him down a short, dusky hall into a bright-windowed room, in which, from the depths of two capacious leather chairs, Sophie and her father rose to greet him.

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. HENDERSON’S PROPOSITION

Late that evening Thompson walked into his room at the Globe.  He seated himself in a rickety chair under a fly-specked incandescent lamp, beside a bed that was clean and comfortable if neither stylish nor massive.  Over against the opposite wall stood a dresser which had suffered at the hands of many lodgers.  Altogether it was a cheap and cheerless abode, a place where a man was protected from the weather, where he could lie down and sleep.  That was all.