"But they had me on the hip, that
time--this time it's going to be different!"

For the rest of that day he brooded, waiting for Cliff. What he would
do he himself did not know, but he was absolutely determined that he
would do something.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MARY V TAKES THE TRAIL

On a Saturday afternoon Spring Street at Sixth is a busy street, as
timid pedestrians and the traffic cop stationed there will testify. In
times not so far distant the general public howled insistently for a
subway, or an elevated railway--anything that would relieve the
congestion and make the downtown district of Los Angeles a decently
safe place to walk in. But subways and elevated railways cost money,
and the money must come from the public which howls for these things.
Gradually the public ceased to howl and turned its attention to dodging
instead. For that reason Sixth and Spring remains a busy corner,
especially at certain hours of the day.

On a certain Saturday, months before the traffic cops grew tired of
blowing whistles and took to revolving silently at stated intervals
with outspread wings after the manner of certain mechanical toys, Mary
V Selmer came from the Western Union's main office, and thanked heaven
silently that her new roadster of the type called the Bear Cat was
still standing at the curb where she had left it. Just beyond it on
the left a stream of automobiles grazed by--but none so new and shiny,
so altogether elegantly "sassy" as the Bear Cat. Mary V, when she
stepped in and settled herself behind the steering wheel, matched the
car, completed its elegant "sassiness," its general air of getting
where it wanted to go, let the traffic be what it might and
devil-take-the-fenders.

Mary V was unhappy, but her unhappiness was somewhat mitigated by the
Bear Cat and her new mole collar that made a soft, fur wall about her
slim throat to her very ears and the tip of her saucy chin, and the
perky hat--also elegantly "sassy"--turned up in front and down behind,
and the new driving gauntlets, and the new coat that had made dad groan
until he had seen Mary V inside it and changed the groan to a proud
little chuckle of admiration.

Mary V was terribly worried about Johnny Jewel. She had been sure that
he had come to Los Angeles, and she had pestered her dad into bringing
her here in the firm belief that she would find him at once and "have
it out with him" once and for all. (Just as though Mary V could ever