t to know," Eaton acknowledged. He moved away
from them, and sat down in one of the seats further down the car.
Connery came out from the drawing-room, went first to one end of the
car, then to the other; and returning with the Pullman conductor, began
to oversee the transfer of the baggage of all other passengers than the
Santoine party to vacant sections in the forward sleepers. People
began to pass through the aisle; evidently the car doors had been
unlocked. Eaton got up and left the car, finding at the door a porter
from one of the other cars stationed to warn people not to linger or
speak or make other noises in going through the car where Santoine was.

As the door was closing behind Eaton, a sound came to his ears from the
car he just had left--a young girl suddenly crying in abandon. Harriet
Santoine, he understood, must have broken down for the moment, after
the strain of the operation; and Eaton halted as though to turn back,
feeling the blood drive suddenly upon his heart. Then, recollecting
that he had no right to go to her, he went on.

CHAPTER VIII

SUSPICION FASTENS ON EATON

As he entered his own car, Eaton halted; that part of the train had
taken on its usual look and manner, or as near so, it seemed, as the
stoppage in the snow left possible. Knowing what he did, Eaton stared
at first with astonishment; and the irrational thought came to him that
the people before him were acting. Then he realized that they were
almost as usual because they did not know what had happened; the fact
that Basil Santoine had been attacked--or that he was on the
train--still had been carefully kept secret by the spreading of some
other explanation of the trouble in the car behind. So now, in their
section, Amy and Constance were reading and knitting; their parents had
immersed themselves in double solitaire; the Englishman looked out the
window at the snow with no different expression than that with which he
would have surveyed a landscape they might have been passing.
Sinclair's section, of course, remained empty; and a porter came and
transferred the surgeon's handbag and overcoat to the car behind in
which he was caring for Santoine.

Eaton found his car better filled than it had been before, for the
people shifted from the car behind had been scattered through the
train. He felt a hand on his arm as he started to go to his seat, and
turned and faced Connery.

"If you must say anything, say it was