"Well, what's the answer?" said Smith.
"Tote an arsenal, yourself, and be ready to shoot first and ask questions afterward. That's the only way you can live peaceably with such men as Jake Boogerfield and Lanterby and Pete Simms."
Smith got out of his chair and took a turn up and down the length of the room. When he came back to stand before Starbuck, he said: "I did that, Billy. I've been carrying a gun for a week and more; not for these ditch pirates, but for somebody else. The other night, when I was out at Hillcrest, Corona happened to see it. I'm not going to tell you what she said, but when I came back to town the next morning, I chucked the gun into a desk drawer. And I hope I'm going to be man enough not to wear it again."
Starbuck dropped the subject abruptly and looked at his watch.
"You liked to have done it, pulling me off up here," he remarked. "I'm due to be at the train to meet Mrs. Billy, and I've got just about three minutes. So long."
Smith changed his street clothes leisurely after Starbuck had gone, and made ready to go down to the café dinner, turning over in his mind, meanwhile, the problem whose solution he had tried to extract from his late visitor. The workable answer was still as far off and as unattainable as ever when he went down-stairs and stopped at the desk to toss his room-key to the clerk.
The hotel register was lying open on the counter, and from force of habit he ran his eye down the list of late arrivals. At the end of the list, in sprawling characters upon which the ink was yet fresh, he read his sentence, and for the first time in his life knew the meaning of panic fear. The newest entry was:
"Josiah Richlander and daughter, Chicago."
Smith was not misled by the place-name. There was only one "Josiah Richlander" in the world for him, and he knew that the Lawrenceville magnate, in registering from Chicago, was only following the example of those who, for good reasons or no reason, use the name of their latest stopping-place for a registry address.