“If they do,” she smiled, “telephone and dad will come down and bail you out.  Good-by, Mr. Thompson.”

Ten minutes or so later he emerged from the express office with a suitcase, a canvas bag, and a roll of blankets.  He had no false pride about people seeing him with his worldly goods upon his back, so to speak, wherefore he crossed the street and trudged half a block to a corner where he could catch a car that would carry him out Market to his old rooming place.

And, since this was a day in which events trod upon each other’s heels to reach him, it befell that as he loitered on the curb a gray touring car rolled up, stopped, and a short, stout man emerging therefrom disappeared hurriedly within the portals of an office building.  Thompson’s gaze rested speculatively on the machine.  Gray cars were common enough.  But without a doubt this was the same vehicle.  The chauffeur in the peaked cap was not among those present—­but Thompson could take oath on the other two.  The young man sat behind the steering wheel.

He, too, it presently transpired, was spurred by recognition.  His roving eyes alighted upon Thompson with a reminiscent gleam.  He edged over in his seat.  Thompson stood almost at the front fender.

“I say,” the man in the car addressed him bluntly, “weren’t you in a red roadster back at Third and Market about fifteen or twenty minutes ago?”

“I was,” Thompson admitted.

Was he to be arrested forthwith on a charge of assault and battery?  Policemen were plentiful enough in that quarter.  All one had to do was crook his finger.  People could not be expected to take kindly to having their chauffeur mauled and disabled like that.  But Thompson stood his ground indifferently.

“Well, I must say,” the young man drawled, producing a cigarette case as he spoke, “you squashed Pebbles with neatness and despatch, and Pebbles was supposed to be some scrapper, too.  What do you weigh?”

Thompson laughed outright.  He had expected a complaint, perhaps prosecution.  He was handed a compliment.

“I don’t know,” he smiled.  “About a hundred and eighty-five, I think.”

“You must be pretty fit to handle a man like that,” the other observed.  “The beggar had it coming, all right.  He gets an overnight jag, and is surly all the next day.  I was going to apologize to the lady, but you were too quick for me.  By the way, are you a working-man—­or a capitalist in disguise?”

Before Thompson quite decided how he should answer this astonishingly personal inquiry, the young man’s companion strode out of the lobby and entered the car.  At least he had his hand on the open door and one foot on the running board.  And there he halted and turned about at something his son said—­Thompson assumed they were father and son.  The likeness of feature was too well-defined to permit of any lesser relation.

The older man took his foot off the running board, and made a deliberate survey of Thompson.