Aline, still with Ridgway’s strong arms about her, slowly came back to the inexorable facts of life.
“You—here?”
“As soon as we could get through—and thank God in time.”
“I would have died, except for—” This brought her immediately to an introduction, and after she had quietly released herself the man who had saved her heard himself being formally presented: “Mr. Ridgway, I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Harley.”
Ridgway turned to Simon Harley a face of hammered steel and bowed, putting his hands deliberately behind his back.
“I’ve been expecting you at Mesa, Mr. Harley,” he said rigidly. “I’ll be glad to have the pleasure of welcoming you there.”
The great financier was wondering where he had heard the man’s name before, but he only said gravely: “You have a claim on me I can never forget, Mr. Ridgway.”
Scornfully the other disdained this proffer. “Not at all. You owe me nothing, Mr. Harley—absolutely nothing. What I have done I have done for her. It is between her and me.”
At this moment the mind of Harley fitted the name Ridgway to its niche in his brain. So this was the audacious filibuster who had dared to fire on the trust flag, the man he had come West to ruin and to humble.
“I think you will have to include me, Mr. Ridgway,” he said suavely. “What is done for my wife is done, also, for me.”