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20 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