A crisp, strong footstep sounded in the hall. Her fingers flew to pat into place the soft golden hair coiled low at the nape of the neck. At times she had a boylike unconcern of sex; again, a spirit wholly feminine.
The clothes of her father fitted Lindsay loosely, for Colin Whitford had begun to take on the flesh of middle age and Clay was lean and clean of build as an elk. But the Westerner was one of those to whom clothes are unimportant. The splendid youth of him would have shone through the rags of a beggar.
"My name is Clay Lindsay," he told her by way of introduction.
"Mine is Beatrice Whitford," she answered.
"I'm to wait here till my clothes dry, yore man says."
"Then you'd better sit down," she suggested.
Within five minutes she knew that he had been in New York less than three hours. His impressions of the city amused and entertained her. He was quite simple. She could look into his mind as though it were a deep, clear well. There was something inextinguishably boyish and buoyant about him. But in his bronzed face and steady, humorous eyes were strength and shrewdness. He was the last man in the world a bunco-steerer could play for a sucker. She felt that. Yet he made no pretenses of a worldly wisdom he did not have.
A voice reached them from the top of the stairs.
"Do you know where Miss Whitford is, Jenkins?"
"Hin the Red Room, sir." The answer was in the even, colorless voice of a servant.
The girl rose at once. "If you'll excuse me," she said, and stepped out of the room.
"Hello, Bee. What do you think? I never saw such idiots as the police of this town are. They're watching this house for a desperado who assaulted some one outside. I met a sergeant on our steps. Says he doesn't think the man's here, but there's just a chance he slipped into the basement. It's absurd."
"Of course it is." There was a ripple of mirth in the girl's voice. "He didn't come in by the basement at all, but walked in at the front door."
"The front door!" exploded her father. "What do you mean? Who let him in?"
"I did. He came as my guest, at my invitation."
"Don't shout, Dad," she advised. "I thought I had brought you up better."
"But--but--but--what do you mean?" he sputtered. "Is this ruffian in the house now?"