"Mr. Dorne would like to speak to you," Avery said. The tone was very like a command.
Connery stopped beside the section, where the man with the spectacles sat with his daughter. Dorne looked up at him.
"You are the train conductor?" he asked, seeming either unsatisfied of this by Connery"s presence or merely desirous of a formal answer.
"Yes, sir," Connery replied.
Dorne fumbled in his inner pocket and brought out a card-case, which he opened, and produced a card. Connery, glancing at the card while the other still held it, saw that it was President Jarvis" visiting card, with the president"s name in engraved block letters; across its top was written briefly in Jarvis" familiar hand, "_This is the pa.s.senger_"; and below, it was signed with the same scrawl of initials which had been on the note Connery had received that morning--"_H. R. J._"
Connery"s hand shook as, while trying to recover himself, he took the card and looked at it more closely, and he felt within him the sinking sensation which follows an escape from danger. He saw that his too ready and too a.s.sured a.s.sumption that Eaton was the man to whom Jarvis"
note had referred, had almost led him into the sort of mistake which is unpardonable in a "trusted" man; he had come within an ace, he realized, of speaking to Eaton and so betraying the presence on the train of a traveler whose journey his superiors were trying to keep secret.
"You need, of course, hold the train no longer," Dorne said to Connery.
"Yes, sir; I received word from Mr. Jarvis about you, Mr. Dorne. I shall follow his instructions fully." Connery recalled the discussion about the drawing-room which had been given to Dorne"s daughter. "I shall see that the Pullman conductor moves some one in one of the other cars to have a compartment for you, sir."
"I prefer a place in the open car," Dorne replied. "I am well situated here. Do not disturb any one."
As he went forward again after the train was under way, Connery tried to recollect how it was that he had been led into such a mistake, and defending himself, he laid it all to old Sammy. But old Sammy was not often mistaken in his identifications. If Eaton was not the person for whom the train was held, might he be some one else of importance? Now as he studied Eaton, he could not imagine what had made him accept this pa.s.senger as a person of great position. It was only when he pa.s.sed Eaton a third time, half an hour later, when the train had long left Seattle, that the half-shaped hazards and guesses about the pa.s.senger suddenly sprang into form. Connery stood and stared back. Eaton did not look like any one whom he remembered having seen; but he fitted perfectly some one whose description had been standing for ten days in every morning and evening edition of the Seattle papers. Yes, allowing for a change of clothes and a different way of brushing his hair, Eaton was exactly the man whom Warden had expected at his house and who had come there and waited while Warden, away in his car, was killed.
Connery was walking back through the train, absent-minded in trying to decide whether he could be at all sure of this from the mere printed description, and trying to decide what he should do if he felt sure, when Mr. Dorne stopped him.
"Conductor, do you happen to know," he questioned, "who the young man is who took Section Three in the car forward?"
Connery gasped; but the question put to him the impossibility of his being sure of any recognition from the description. "He gave his name on his ticket as Philip D. Eaton, sir," Connery replied.
"Is that all you know about him?"
"Yes, sir."
"If you find out anything about him, let me know," Dorne bade.
"Yes, sir." Connery moved away and soon went back to look again at Eaton. Had Mr. Dorne also seen the likeness of Eaton in the published descriptions of the man whom Warden had said was most outrageously wronged? the man for whom Warden had been willing to risk his life, who afterwards had not dared to come forward to aid the police with anything he might know? Connery determined to let nothing interfere with learning more of Eaton; Dorne"s request only gave him added responsibility.
Dorne, however, was not depending upon Connery alone for further information. As soon as the conductor had gone, he turned back to his daughter and Avery upon the seat opposite.
"Avery," he said in a tone of direction, "I wish you to get in conversation with this Philip Eaton. It will probably be useful if you let Harriet talk with him too. She would get impressions helpful to me which you can"t."
The girl started with surprise but recovered at once. "Yes, Father,"
she said.
"What, sir?" Avery ventured to protest.
CHAPTER III
MISS DORNE MEETS EATON
Dorne motioned Avery to the aisle, where already some of the pa.s.sengers, having settled their belongings in their sections, were beginning to wander through the cars seeking acquaintances or players to make up a card game. Eaton, however, was not among these. On the contrary, when these approached him in his section, he frankly avoided chance of their speaking to him, by an appearance of complete immersion in his own concerns. The Englishman directly across the aisle from Eaton clearly was not likely to speak to him, or to anybody else, without an introduction; the red-haired man, "D. S.," however, seemed a more expansive personality. Eaton, seeing "D. S." look several times in his direction, pulled a newspaper from the pocket of his overcoat and engrossed himself in it; the newspaper finished, he opened his traveling bag and produced a magazine.
But as the train settled into the steady running which reminded of the days of travel ahead during which the half-dozen cars of the train must create a world in which it would be absolutely impossible to avoid contact with other people, Eaton put the magazine into his traveling bag, took from the bag a handful of cigars with which he filled a plain, uninitialed cigar-case, and went toward the club and observation car in the rear. As he pa.s.sed through the sleeper next to him,--the last one,--Harriet Dorne glanced up at him and spoke to her father; Dorne nodded but did not look up. Eaton went on into the wide-windowed observation-room beyond, which opened onto the rear platform protected on three sides.
The observation-room was nearly empty. The sleet which had been falling when they left Seattle had changed to huge, heavy flakes of fast-falling snow, which blurred the windows, obscured the landscape and left visible only the two thin black lines of track that, streaming out behind them, vanished fifty feet away in the white smother. The only occupants of the room were a young woman who was reading a magazine, and an elderly man. Eaton chose a seat as far from these two as possible.
He had been there only a few minutes, however, when, looking up, he saw Harriet Dorne and Avery enter the room. They pa.s.sed him, engaged in conversation, and stood by the rear door looking out into the storm.
It was evident to Eaton, although he did not watch them, that they were arguing something; the girl seemed insistent, Avery irritated and unwilling. Her manner showed that she won her point finally. She seated herself in one of the chairs, and Avery left her. He wandered, as if aimlessly, to the reading table, turning over the magazines there; abandoning them, he gazed about as if bored; then, with a wholly casual manner, he came toward Eaton and took the seat beside him.
"Rotten weather, isn"t it?" Avery observed somewhat ungraciously.
Eaton could not well avoid reply. "It"s been getting worse," he commented, "ever since we left Seattle."
"We"re running into it, apparently." Again Avery looked toward Eaton and waited.
"It"ll be bad in the mountains, I suspect," Eaton said.
"Yes--lucky if we get through."
The conversation on Avery"s part was patently forced; and it was equally forced on Eaton"s; nevertheless it continued. Avery introduced the war and other subjects upon which men, thrown together for a time, are accustomed to exchange opinions. But Avery did not do it easily or naturally; he plainly was of the caste whose pose it is to repel, not seek, overtures toward a chance acquaintance. His lack of practice was perfectly obvious when at last he asked directly: "Beg pardon, but I don"t think I know your name."
Eaton was obliged to give it.
"Mine"s Avery," the other offered; "perhaps you heard it when we were getting our berths a.s.signed."
And again the conversation, enjoyed by neither of them, went on.
Finally the girl at the end of the car rose and pa.s.sed them, as though leaving the car. Avery looked up.
"Where are you going, Harry?"
"I think some one ought to be with Father."
"I"ll go in just a minute."
She had halted almost in front of them. Avery, hesitating as though he did not know what he ought to do, finally arose; and as Eaton observed that Avery, having introduced himself, appeared now to consider it his duty to present Eaton to Harriet Dorne, Eaton also arose. Avery murmured the names. Harriet Dorne, resting her hand on the back of Avery"s chair, joined in the conversation. As she replied easily and interestedly to a comment of Eaton"s, Avery suddenly reminded her of her father. After a minute, when Avery--still ungracious and still irritated over something which Eaton could not guess--rather abruptly left them, she took Avery"s seat; and Eaton dropped into his chair beside her.
Now, this whole proceeding--though within the convention which, forbidding a girl to make a man"s acquaintance directly, says nothing against her making it through the medium of another man--had been so unnaturally done that Eaton understood that Harriet Dorne deliberately had arranged to make his acquaintance, and that Avery, angry and objecting, had been overruled.
She seemed to Eaton less alertly boyish now than she had looked an hour before when they had boarded the train. Her cheeks were smoothly rounded, her lips rather full, her lashes very long. He could not look up without looking directly at her, for her chair, which had not been moved since Avery left it, was at an angle with his own. A faint, sweet fragrance from her hair and clothing came to him and made him recollect how long it was--five years--since he had talked with, or even been near, such a girl as this; and the sudden tumult of his pulses which her nearness caused warned him to keep watch of what he said until he had learned why she had sought him out.
To avoid the appearance of studying her too openly, he turned slightly, so that his gaze went past her to the white turmoil outside the windows.
"It"s wonderful," she said, "isn"t it?"
"You mean the storm?" A twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt came to Eaton"s eyes.
"It would be more interesting if it allowed a little more to be seen.
At present there is nothing visible but snow."
"Is that the only way it affects you?" She turned to him, apparently a trifle disappointed.