she had smiled at him. The memory made Robert Macklin's lips twitch
just a trifle, and Ronicky Doone saw it.

Presently the dignitary returned the picture and raised his head from
thought. "It is vaguely behind my mind, something about this lady," he
said. "But I'm sorry to say, gentlemen, I really don't know you and--"

"Why, don't you know us!" broke in Bill Gregg. "Ain't my partner here
just introduced us?"

"Exactly," said Robert Macklin. And his opinion of the two sank a full
hundred points. Such grammar proclaimed a ruffian.

"You don't get his drift," Ronicky was explaining to his companion. "I
introduced us, but he doesn't know who I am. We should have brought
along a letter of introduction." He turned to Macklin. "I am mighty
sorry I didn't get one," he said.

It came to Macklin for the fraction of a second that he was being
mocked, but he instantly dismissed the foolish thought. Even the rough
fellows must be able to recognize a man when they saw one.

"The point is," went on Ronicky gently, "that my friend is very eager
for important reasons to see this lady, to find her. And he doesn't
even know her name." Here his careful grammar gave out with a crash.
"You can't beat a deal like that, eh, Macklin? If you can remember
anything about her, her name first, then, where she was bound, who was
with her, how tall she is, the color of her eyes, we'd be glad to know
anything you know. What can you do for us?"