ountain time is one hour slower.
Careful, Mr. Perkins; let me take your grip. You won't need it to-day."

_The Elderly Maiden Lady:_ "Now, Mr. Brockway, are you _sure_ it'll be
perfectly safe to leave Dicky with the porter?"

_Mr. Somers, sotto voce_ in Brockway's ear: "Hang Dicky! Let's go to
breakfast."

_The Gadfly:_ "Mr. ah--Brockway, you will oblige me by sitting at my
table. I don't ah--purpose to lose sight of you, sir."

_Brockway_, to the porter: "All out, John?"

_The Porter_, with the cavernous smile of his kind: "All out, sah."

_Brockway_, sandwiching himself between two of the unescorted ladies:
"All aboard for the dining-room!"

So much Harry Quatremain, standing aloof, saw and heard, and was minded
to go back to President Vennor and make his report accordingly. But the
yard crew, already busily dismembering the "Flying Kestrel," whipped the
Tadmor and the private car out into the yard, and the secretary was left
standing in the unquiet crowd.

Having nothing better to do, he sauntered across to the depot, not
intending to spy further upon the passenger agent, but rather cudgelling
his brain to devise some pretext upon which he could safely lie to the
President and so appease his self-respect. The pretext did not suggest
itself; and after looking into the dining-room, where he saw Brockway
and his thirty-odd in one corner, and the Burtons, whom he knew by
sight, in another, he strolled out to the end of the building where the
yard-crew was switching the Naught-fifty to its place on the short spur.
The President was standing on the front platform; and Quatremain, having
no plausible falsehood ready, reported the simple fact.

"Very good," said his employer. "Now go back and keep your eye on him;
and, at precisely five minutes of eight, come and tell me where he is
and what he is doing."

Quatremain turned on his heel and swore a clerkly oath, well smothered,
to the effect that he would do nothing of the sort. It was not the first
time the President had used him as a private detective, but, happily,
use had not yet dulled his reluctance. None the less, he went back to
the door of the dining-room and waited, and while he tarried curiosity
came to keep wrath company. What was afoot that the President should be
so anxious about the movements of the passenger agent? The secretary
could not guess, but he determined to find out.

Three minutes before Quatremain's time-limit expired, Brockway, followed