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 understand that I couldn’t interfere with him, seeing that he had a ticket and you didn’t prefer no charge?”

“All right, guard,” replied Beaumanoir, with his weary smile. “It really doesn’t matter. He seems to have taken me for a madman, while I took him for a dead-head, that’s all. These little misunderstandings will arise, you know. We’re behind time, eh?”

Taking the hint, the guard retired and started the train, Beaumanoir resuming his seat in a frame of mind only to be described as mixed. He stared out into the gloom of night, wondering what was to come next. His little stratagem had succeeded, in so far as it had revealed Marker as the possessor of a ticket, and therefore as presumably charged with some design against himself, though it had shed no light on the nature of that design. But the adroitness with which the wretched spy had extricated himself made him gnash his teeth because of the impudent reliance on his inability to assign a reason to the guard for fearing an intruder. That in itself was clear evidence that Mr. Marker was under the seat with a very real purpose.

Had that purpose been entirely thwarted by