In the course of the dinner, prompted by a devil of pure mischief, I
dwelt with loving insistence on certain smells and sounds of New York
which go straight to the heart of the native in foreign parts; and
Wilton began to ask many questions about his associates aforetime--men
of the New York Yacht Club, Storm King, or the Restigouche, owners of
rivers, ranches, and shipping in their playtime, lords of railways,
kerosene, wheat, and cattle in their offices. When the green mint came,
I gave him a peculiarly oily and atrocious cigar, of the brand they sell
in the tessellated, electric-lighted, with expensive-pictures of the
nude adorned bar of the Pandemonium, and Wilton chewed the end for
several minutes ere he lit it. The butler left us alone, and the chimney
of the oak-panelled diningroom began to smoke.

"That's another!" said he, poking the fire savagely, and I knew what he
meant. One cannot put steam-heat in houses where Queen Elizabeth slept.
The steady beat of a night-mail, whirling down the valley, recalled me
to business. "What about the Great Buchonian?" I said.

"Come into my study. That's all--as yet."

It was a pile of Seidlitz-powders-coloured correspondence, perhaps nine
inches high, and it looked very businesslike.

"You can go through it," said Wilton. "Now I could take a chair and a
red flag and go into Hyde Park and say the most atrocious things about
your Queen, and preach anarchy and all that, y' know, till I was hoarse,
and no one would take any notice. The Police damn 'em!--would protect
me if I got into trouble. But for a little thing like flagging a dirty
little sawed-off train,--running through my own grounds, too,--I get
the whole British Constitution down on me as if I sold bombs. I don't
understand it."

"No more does the Great Buchonian--apparently." I was turning over the
letters. "Here's the traffic superintendent writing that it's utterly
incomprehensible that any man should... Good heavens, Wilton, you have
done it!" I giggled, as I read on.

"What's funny now?" said my host.

"It seems that you, or Howard for you, stopped the three-forty Northern
down."

"I ought to know that! They all had their knife into me, from the
engine-driver up."

"But it's the three-forty--the Induna--surely you've heard of the Great
Buchonian's Induna!"

"How the deuce am I to know one train from another? They come along
about every two minutes."

"Quite so. But this happens to be the Induna--the