n passed Eaton, slowing so that the young
man could speak to him if he wished, and even halting an instant to
exchange a word with the Englishman; but Eaton allowed him to pass on
without speaking to him. Connery's step quickened as he entered the
next car on his way back to the smoking compartment of the observation
car, where he expected to compare sheets with the Pullman conductor
before taking up the tickets. As he entered this car, however, Avery
stopped him.

"Mr. Dorne would like to speak to you," Avery said. The tone was very
like a command.

Connery stopped beside the section, where the man with the spectacles
sat with his daughter. Dorne looked up at him.

"You are the train conductor?" he asked, seeming either unsatisfied of
this by Connery's presence or merely desirous of a formal answer.

"Yes, sir," Connery replied.

Dorne fumbled in his inner pocket and brought out a card-case, which he
opened, and produced a card. Connery, glancing at the card while the
other still held it, saw that it was President Jarvis' visiting card,
with the president's name in engraved block letters; across its top was
written briefly in Jarvis' familiar hand, "_This is the passenger_";
and below, it was signed with the same scrawl of initials which had
been on the note Connery had received that morning--"_H. R. J._"

Connery's hand shook as, while trying to recover himself, he took the
card and looked at it more closely, and he felt within him the sinking
sensation which follows an escape from danger. He saw that his too
ready and too assured assumption that Eaton was the man to whom Jarvis'
note had referred, had almost led him into the sort of mistake which is
unpardonable in a "trusted" man; he had come within an ace, he
realized, of speaking to Eaton and so betraying the presence on the
train of a traveler whose journey his superiors were trying to keep
secret.

"You need, of course, hold the train no longer," Dorne said to Connery.

"Yes, sir; I received word from Mr. Jarvis about you, Mr. Dorne. I
shall follow his instructions fully." Connery recalled the discussion
about the drawing-room which had been given to Dorne's daughter. "I
shall see that the Pullman conductor moves some one in one of the other
cars to have a compartment for you, sir."

"I prefer a place in the open car," Dorne replied. "I am well situated
here. Do not disturb any one."

As he went forward again after the train was under way,