He had a wild impulse to stop the taxi and sprint back to the hotel after Bland, and give him fifty dollars or so as a salve to his conscience, even though he could not take him into this new enterprise or even tell him what it was.

Uncomfortably his memory visioned that other day (was it only yesterday morning?
It seemed impossible!) when he had wandered forlornly out to the hangar in Tucson and had found Bland true to his trust when he might so easily have been false; when everything would seem to encourage him to be false.

How much, after all, did Johnny owe to Bland Halliday?
Just then he seemed to owe Bland everything.
It was all well enough for him to argue that his debt to Bland had been paid when he brought him to Los Angeles, and that Bland could have no just complaint if Johnny declined to continue the partnership longer.
Bland, he told himself, would have quit him cold any time some other chance looked better.

It was Johnny's plane, and Johnny had a right to do as he pleased with it.
For all that, Johnny rode to the S.P.depot feeling like a criminal trying to escape.

He took his luggage and sneaked into the waiting room, sought an inconspicuous place and waited, his whole head and shoulders hidden behind a newspaper which he was not reading.