III

"Car-l-i-s-l-e!" The Caruso voice of a gifted railway porter intoned the
word in two swelling syllables, so alluring in their suggestion to
passengers that it was strange the whole train did not empty itself upon
the platform. So far from this being the case, however, not more than
six men and half as many women, one with two sleepy, whimpering
children, obeyed the siren call.

Five of the men looked for porters, and eventually culled them, like
stiff-stemmed wayside plants; but the sixth man had not set his foot on
the platform before he was accosted by two would-be helpers.

What there was about him so different from, and so superior to, his
fellow-travellers that it was visible to the naked eye at night, in a
not too brilliantly lighted railway station, could be explained only by
experts in the art of deciding at a glance where the best financial
results are to be obtained.

The man was not richly dressed, was not decked out with watch-chains and
scarf-pins and rings, nor had he a shape to hint that the possession of
millions had led to self-indulgence. Many people would have passed him
by with a glance, thinking him exactly like other men of decent birth
and life who knew how to wear their clothes; but railway porters and
romantic women (are there other women?) have a special instinct about
men. The two female passengers unhampered by howling babies looked at
him as they went by, and they would instinctively have known, though
even they could not have explained, why the porters unhesitatingly
selected this man as prey.

He was not very tall, and not very handsome, and he was not conspicuous
in any way: but if he had been an actor, a deaf and blind audience would
somehow have felt with a thrill that he had come upon the stage. The
secret was not intricate: only something of which people talk a dozen
times a day without knowing technically what they mean--personal
magnetism. He was rather dark and rather thin, rather like a conquering
soldier in his simple yet authoritative way of giving orders for what he
wanted done. He had eyes which were of an almost startling blueness in
his sunburned face: a peculiarity that made strangers look twice at him
sometimes. If his features hardened into a certain cynical grimness when
he thought about things that really mattered, his smile for things that
didn't matter was singularly pleasant.

He did not smile at the porters as he pointed out that, besides his
suit