“Do I? Well—But that can’t be all. Were there any more—er—incidents?”
“Well, yes!” Topham spoke carefully. “Yes. There was one other small occurrence. I came up from Cuxhaven with her brother.”
“Ah! You were—alone—with him?”
“Only for a few minutes. Two other men insisted on butting into our compartment. Ferreira got quite excited in his efforts to keep them out, but they would come in. Of course, they had as much right as we did. But Ferreira wouldn’t stand for it and actually came to blows with them. In fact I was involved and—I got the worst of it, too!”
With a chuckle Rutile threw himself back in his chair. “Well! I will be d—d!” he observed. “You don’t mean you had a regular fight, do you?”
Topham grinned. “Well! Not exactly. The intruders simply sat down on Ferreira and me. We weren’t in it, really. Then at the next stop they threw down their cards and left the train.”
“Their cards? What were their names?”
“I don’t know! Ferreira—by the way, he said he knew you—Ferreira—er—lost them out of the window!” replied Topham, guilelessly. “Later I discovered that somehow I had lost my dummy package in the scuffle.”
“Oh! Oh!—And the lady? What became of her?”
“She stayed in Hamburg. You understand, old man, these things that I’ve been telling you are mere incidents of travel, of no real consequence. You do understand that, don’t you?”