ful to add that Santoine, having been a
close personal friend of Gabriel Warden, had come purely in a personal
capacity, and the impression was given that Santoine had returned
quietly some days before. The mere prolonging of his stay in the West
was more than suggestive that affairs among the powerful were truly in
such state as Warden had proclaimed; this attack upon Santoine, so
similar to that which had slain Warden, and delivered within eleven
days of Warden's death, must be of the gravest significance.

Connery stood overwhelmed for the moment with this fuller recognition
of the seriousness of the disaster which had come upon this man
entrusted to his charge; then he turned to the surgeon.

"Can you do anything for him here, Doctor?" he asked.

The surgeon glanced down the car. "That stateroom--is it occupied?"

"It's occupied by his daughter."

"We'll take him in there, then. Is the berth made?"

The conductor went to the rear of the car and brought the porter who
had been stationed there, with the brakeman. He set the negro to
making up the berth; and when it was finished, the four men lifted the
inert figure of Basil Santoine, carried it into the drawing-room and
laid it on its back upon the bed.

"I have my instruments," Sinclair said. "I'll get them; but before I
decide to do anything, I ought to see his daughter. Since she is here,
her consent is necessary before any operation on him."

The surgeon spoke to Avery. Eaton saw by Avery's start of recollection
that Harriet Dorne's--or Harriet Santoine's--friend could not have been
thinking of her at all during the recent moments. The chances of life
or death of Basil Santoine evidently so greatly and directly affected
Donald Avery that he had been absorbed in them to the point of
forgetting all other interests than his own. Eaton's own thought had
gone often to her. Had Connery in his directions said anything to the
trainmen guarding the door or to the passengers on the platforms, that
had frightened her with suspicions of what had happened here? When the
first sense of something wrong spread back to the observation car, what
word had reached her? Did she connect it with her father? Was
she--the one most closely concerned--among those who had been on the
rear platform seeking admittance? Was she standing there in the aisle
of the next car waiting for confirmation of her dread? Or had no word
reached her, and must the news of the attack upo