Packard swore.
“Infernal old fools!” he muttered. “I’m going to follow and have them arrested! I’ll put that drunken idiot in the jug for this! Why, he would have shot me dead if the thing had been loaded with a ball cartridge!”
“Better let them go,” urged Mescal. “I want to talk with you about something important.”
“But I don’t know you.”
“I introduced myself just before those men attempted to stampede us.”
Packard seemed in doubt. He wanted to follow and make trouble for the man who had been so reckless with his revolver, and yet something was urging him to listen to the stranger, who claimed to have important business with him.
“If we stay here,” he said, “we’ll get bumped into again by these gray-haired Yale men of other days.”
“Yet I must stay here. Let’s get off the steps, where we can watch both entrances. I am not going to be given the slip again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Something I will explain if you prove to be the man I think you are.”