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78 "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 upon her father come to her with all the shock of suddenness?