Under such circumstances as these the Canadian athlete believes he has a trump card to play. Once the door is shut Happy Jack may not find it so easy to get out again.
He manages to give Wycherley a wink and a nod which that individual rightly interprets, and he also enters the room, remaining with his back against the door, thus serving as a barrier to ingress or escape.
One thing Aleck notes. John has turned his back upon them the very instant he heard the name of Happy Jack mentioned; so when that individual enters the room he does not know, after his sweeping glance around, who is present.
Happy Jack has one trait that in times past has served him well. This is assurance that would well become a New York alderman. Nothing appears to daunt him. Put him down at Her Majesty’s reception, and he would do his little part after his own way, if not quite to the Queen’s taste.
He is not clad in a dress suit, but this fact has no weight with him. Happy Jack Phœnix in his business Scotch cheviot is perfectly at home even amid the satins and diamonds of the finest reception Chicago has seen during the season.
“Mr. Craig, you will, I know, pardon my boldness in hunting you down, when you learn the reason for such a move. Singular man at all times. When I get my mind set on anything all earth and the lower regions—beg pardon, young lady—can’t persuade me otherwise,” he says, as placing both hands on the back of a chair he faces the Canadian, beyond whom are Cereal and his daughter, both looking in open-eyed wonder at this uninvited guest.
“That’s so!” mutters John, and he has had good reason in the past to lament this trait which Jack mentions.
“Eh! did anyone speak? Well, as I was saying, Mr. Craig, I’m set in my way. I can’t be turned aside. If I was walking along a railroad track and an engine came at me, there’d be trouble, and two to one it wouldn’t be me that suffered. That’s my nature. Now, fortune threw in my way certain information. It concerned a gentleman whose acquaintance I formed last night. I said to myself, 'Happy Jack, not a wink of sleep for you until you see him and put a flea in his ear.’ That is why I am here. I have brought the flea with me.
“You wonder why I go to all this trouble for one almost a stranger. It pleases me. I’m always doing something for others—expect to become a philanthropist after sowing the last of my wild oats. Then, there’s another reason. My friend, the way you sent that rascally Turk spinning last night won my heart. Something of a gymnast myself in a small way, a believer in the manly art of self-defense, and I said to myself: 'The chap who can give a fellow such a whirl takes my heart.’
“Pardon this long but necessary digression, as the fellow in the novel says. Now, having made myself solid, I’ll come down to common horse sense, and talk business.”