me; it has been
proved. Did you take the train in order to attack me?"

"No."

"To spy upon me?"

"No."

Santoine was silent for an instant. "What was it you took the train to
tell me?"

"I? Nothing."

Santoine moved his head upon the pillow.

"Father!" his daughter warned.

"Oh, I am careful, Harriet; Dr. Sinclair allows me to move a little....
Mr. Eaton, in one of the three answers you have just given me, you are
not telling the truth. I defy you to find in human reasoning more than
four reasons why my presence could have made you take this train in the
manner and with the attending circumstances you did. You took it to
injure me, or to protect me from injury; to learn something from me, or
to inform me of something. I discard the second of these possibilities
because you asked for a berth in another car and for other reasons
which make it impossible. However, I will ask it of you. Did you take
the train to protect me from injury?"

"No."

"Which of your former answers do you wish to change, then?"

"None."

"You deny all four possibilities?"

"Yes."

"Then you are using denial only to hide the fact, whatever it may be;
and of the four possibilities I am obliged to select the first as the
most likely."

"You mean that I attacked you?"

"That is not what I said. I said you must have taken the train to
injure me, but that does not mean necessarily that it was to attack me
with your own hand. Any attack aimed against me would be likely to
have several agents. There would be somewhere, probably, a distant
brain that had planned it; there would be an intelligent brain near by
to oversee it; and there would be a strong hand to perform it. The
overseeing brain and the performing hand--or hands--might belong to one
person, or to two, or more. How many there were I cannot now
determine, since people were allowed to get off the train. The
conductor and Avery--"

"Father!"

"Yes, Harriet; but I expected better of Avery. Mr. Eaton, as you are
plainly withholding the truth as to your reason for taking this train,
and as I have suffered injury, I am obliged--from the limited
information I now have--to assume that you knew an attack was to be
made by some one, upon that train. In addition to the telegram,
addressed to you under your name of Eaton and informing of my presence
on the train, I have also been informed, of course, of the code message
received by you addressed to Hillward. You