"Verda got your telegram, and she asked me to meet you," he rejoined crisply. "Also, to make her excuses for to-night: she has gone to bed."
"So that's the way the cat's jumping, is it?" said the imitation black sheep, the grin twisting itself into a leer. "She got a line on you, even if Macauley couldn't. By Gad! I guess I didn't get out here any too soon."
Smith ignored the half-jealous pleasantry. "Bring your grip," he directed. "I have an auto here and we'll drive."
Being a stranger in a strange city, Jibbey could not know that the hotel was only three squares distant. For the same cause he was entirely unsuspicious when Smith turned the car to the right out of the cab rank and took a street leading to the western suburb. But when the pavements had been left behind, together with all the town lights save an occasional arc-lamp at a crossing, and he was trying for the third time to hold a match to the hanging cigarette, enough ground had been covered to prompt a question.
"Hell of a place to call itself a city, if anybody should ask you," he chattered. "Much of this to worry through?"
Smith bent lower over the tiller-wheel, advancing the spark and opening the throttle for more gas.
"A good bit of it. Didn't you know that Mr. Richlander is out in the hills, buying a mine?"
Tucker Jibbey was rapid only in his attitude toward the world of decency; the rapidity did not extend to his mental processes. The suburb street had become a country road, the bridge over the torrenting Gloria had thundered under the flying wheels, and a great butte, black in its foresting from foot to summit, was rising slowly among the western stars before his small brain had grasped the relation of cause to effect.
"Say, here, Monty—dammit all, you hold on! Verda isn't with Old Moneybags; she's staying at the hotel in town. I wired and found out before I left Denver. Where in Sam Hill are you taking me to?"
Smith made no reply other than to open the cut-out and to put his foot on the accelerator. The small car leaped forward at racing speed and Jibbey clutched wildly at the wheel.