"Oh, yes. He's in the Red Room here--and unless he's very deaf he hears everything we are saying," the girl answered calmly, much amused at the amazement of her father. "Won't you come in and see him? He doesn't seem very desperate."
Clay rose, pinpoints of laughter dancing in his eyes. He liked the gay audacity of this young woman, just as he liked the unconventional pluck with which she had intruded herself into his affairs as a rescuer and the businesslike efficiency that had got him out of his wet rags into comfortable clothes.
A moment later he was offering a brown hand to Colin Whitford, who took it reluctantly, with the same wariness a boxer does that of his opponent in the ring. His eyes said plainly, "What the deuce are you doing here, sitting in my favorite chair, smoking one of my imported cigars, wearing my clothes, and talking to my daughter?"
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Whitford. Yore daughter has just saved my life from the police," the Westerner said, and his friendly smile was very much in evidence.
"You make yourself at home," answered the owner of a large per cent of the stock of the famous Bird Cage mine.
"My guests do, Dad. It's the proof that I'm a perfect hostess," retorted Beatrice, her dainty, provocative face flashing to mirth.
"Hmp!" grunted her father dryly. "I'd like to know, young man, why the police are shadowing this house?"
"I expect they are, and I'm not sure I won't help them find you. You'll have to show cause if I don't."
"His bark is much worse than his bite," the girl explained to Clay, just as though her father were not present.
"Hmp!" exploded the mining magnate a second time. "Get busy, young fellow."
Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it. The cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for mimicry. His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled cockerel. "A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a while occasionally. Which you can take it from me that when I. Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with his own brother. Qvality, my friendts, qvality! Why, I got anyhow a suit which I might be married in without shame, un'erstan' me."