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Rh ently were still there. He had laid out the things on the seat across from him while checking them up, and now he began to put them back in the bag. Suddenly he noticed that one of his socks was missing; what had been eleven pairs was now only ten pairs and one odd sock.

The disappearance of a single sock was so strange, so bizarre, so perplexing that—unless it was accidental—he could not account for it at all. No one opens a man's bag and steals one sock, and he was quite sure there had been eleven complete pairs there earlier in the day. Certainly then, it had been accidental: the bag had been opened, its contents taken out and examined, and in putting them back, one sock had been dropped unnoticed. The absence of the sock, then, meant no more than that the contents of the bag had been thoroughly investigated. By whom? By the man against whom the telegram directed to Lawrence Hillward had warned Eaton?

Ever since his receipt of the telegram, Eaton—as he passed through the train in going to and from the diner or for other reasons—had been trying covertly to determine which, if any one, among the passengers was the "one" who, the telegram had warned him, was "following" him. For at first he had interpreted it to mean that one of "them" whom he had to fear must be on the train. Later he had felt certain that this could not be the case, for otherwise any one of "them" who knew him would have spoken by this time. He had watched particularly for a time the man who had claimed the telegram and given the name of Hillward; but the only conclusion he had been able to reach was that the man's name might be Hillward, and that coincidence—strange