“Never you mind when, sah.  I’m not issuin’ any tickets of admission.  It’s goin’ to be a strictly private entertainment.”

“Are you going to take a water hose along?”

“That’s right,” reproached Clay.  “Make fun of me because I’m a stranger and come right from the alfalfa country.”  He turned to Beatrice cheerfully.  “O’ course he bit me good and proper.  I’m green.  But I’ll bet he loses that smile awful quick when he sees me again.”

“You’re not going to—­”

“Me, I’m the gentlest citizen in Arizona.  Never in trouble.  Always peaceable and quiet.  Don’t you get to thinkin’ me a bad-man, for I ain’t.”

Jenkins came to the door and announced “Mr. Bromfield.”

Almost on his heels a young man in immaculate riding-clothes sauntered into the room.  He had the assured ease of one who has the run of the house.  Miss Whitford introduced the two young men and Bromfield looked the Westerner over with a suave insolence in his dark, handsome eyes.

Clay recognized him immediately.  He had shaken hands once before with this well-satisfied young man, and on that occasion a fifty-dollar bill had passed from one to the other.  The New Yorker evidently did not know him.

It became apparent at once that Bromfield had called to go riding in the Park with Miss Whitford.  That young woman came up to say good-bye to her new acquaintance.

“Will you be here when I get back?”

“Not if our friends outside give me a chance for a getaway,” he told her.

Her bright, unflinching eyes looked into his.  “You’ll come again and let us know how you escaped,” she invited.

“I’ll ce’tainly do that, Miss Whitford.”

“Then we’ll look for you Thursday afternoon, say.”

“I’ll be here.”

“If the police don’t get you.”

“They won’t,” he promised serenely.

“When you’re quite ready, Bee,” suggested Bromfield in a bored voice.

She nodded casually and walked out of the room like a young Diana, straight as a dart in her trim slenderness.

Clay slipped out of the house by the back way, cut across to the subway, and took a downtown train.  He got out at Forty-Second Street and made his way back to the clothing establishment of I. Bernstein.

That gentleman was in his office in the rear of the store.  Lindsay walked back to it, opened and closed the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

The owner of the place rose in alarm from the stool where he was sitting.  “What right do you got to lock that door?” he demanded.

“I don’t want to be interrupted while I’m sellin’ you this suit, Mr. Bernstein,” the cowpuncher told him easily, and he proceeded to unwrap the damp package under his arm.  “It’s a pippin of a suit.  The color won’t run or fade, and it’s absolutely unshrinkable.  You won’t often get a chance at a suit like this.  Notice the style, the cut, the quality of the goods.  And it’s only goin’ to cost you fifty-five dollars.”