“He has a profound sense of humour,” she soliloquized. “He's going to force me into the open. Oh, dear, I'm helpless.” Aloud she said: “On the train in Death Valley last month, Mr. Webster. You came aboard with whiskers.”
Webster shook his head slowly, as if mystified. “I fear you're mistaken, Miss Ruey. I cannot recall the meeting, and if I ever wore whiskers, no human being would ever be able to recognize me without them. Besides, I wasn't on the train in Death Valley last month. I was in Denver—so you must have met some other Mr. Webster.”
She flushed furiously. “I didn't think I could be mistaken,” she answered a trifle coldly.
“It is my misfortune that you were,” he replied graciously. “Certainly, had we met at that time, I should not have failed to recognize you now. Somehow, Miss Ruey, I never have any luck.”
She was completely outgeneralled, and having the good sense to realize it, submitted gracefully. “He's perfectly horrible,” she told herself, “but at least he can lie like a gentleman—and I always did like that kind of man.”
So they chatted on the veranda until luncheon was announced and Dolores left them to go to her room.
“Well?” Billy queried the moment she was out of earshot. “What do you think, Johnny?”
“I think,” said John Stuart Webster slowly, “that you're a good picker, Bill. She's my ideal of a fine young woman, and my advice to you is to marry her. I'll grub-stake you. Bill, this stiff collar is choking me; I wish you'd wait here while I go to my room and rustle up a soft one.”
In the privacy of his room John Stuart Webster sat down on his bed and held his head in his hands, for he had just received a blow in the solar plexus and was still groggy; there was an ache in his head, and the quizzical light had faded from his eyes. Presently, however, he pulled himself together and approaching the mirror looked long at his weather-beaten countenance.
“Too old,” he murmured, “too old to be dreaming dreams.”