of the morning. I had acted on my first impulse--the
masculine one of shielding a woman.

The doctor had unfastened the coat of the striped pajamas and exposed
the dead man's chest. On the left side was a small punctured wound of
insignificant size.

"Very neatly done," the doctor said with appreciation. "Couldn't have
done it better myself. Right through the intercostal space: no time even
to grunt."

"Isn't the heart around there somewhere?" I asked. The medical man
turned toward me and smiled austerely.

"That's where it belongs, just under that puncture, when it isn't
gadding around in a man's throat or his boots."

I had a new respect for the doctor, for any one indeed who could
crack even a feeble joke under such circumstances, or who could run an
impersonal finger over that wound and those stains. Odd how a healthy,
normal man holds the medical profession in half contemptuous regard
until he gets sick, or an emergency like this arises, and then turns
meekly to the man who knows the ins and outs of his mortal tenement,
takes his pills or his patronage, ties to him like a rudderless ship in
a gale.

"Suicide, is it, doctor?" I asked.

He stood erect, after drawing the bed-clothing over the face, and,
taking off his glasses, he wiped them slowly.

"No, it is not suicide," he announced decisively. "It is murder."

Of course, I had expected that, but the word itself brought a shiver. I
was just a bit dizzy. Curious faces through the car were turned toward
us, and I could hear the porter behind me breathing audibly. A stout
woman in negligee came down the aisle and querulously confronted the
porter. She wore a pink dressing-jacket and carried portions of her
clothing.

"Porter," she began, in the voice of the lady who had "dangled," "is
there a rule of this company that will allow a woman to occupy the
dressing-room for one hour and curl her hair with an alcohol lamp while
respectable people haven't a place where they can hook their--"

She stopped suddenly and stared into lower ten. Her shining pink cheeks
grew pasty, her jaw fell. I remember trying to think of something to
say, and of saying nothing at all. Then--she had buried her eyes in the
nondescript garments that hung from her arm and tottered back the way
she had come. Slowly a little knot of men gathered around us, silent
for the most part. The doctor was making a search of the berth when the
conductor elbowed his way through, followed by the i