"Say, Alf," interrupted another member of the working force coming up from the next car. "I got a--what do you call a sonomballist? The sort that plays baseball in a sound sleep," the black-faced man grinned. "I got a strange lady in a strange place, and she belongs in your car. You got to extract her."
"What--what you--all mean, Ferd?" asked Alf, while Jane waited apprehensively.
"You come along wiff me and I'll demonstrate," proposed Ferd, otherwise Ferdinand. "I'se been argufying wiff de lady, didn't like to shake her zactly. But she don't pear to want to come back to you, Alf. She has took a notion to me." He grinned and chuckled in the good nature characteristic of the well-trained Pullman porter.
Jane listened with increasing anxiety. It might really be Judith, but where was she?
"What you asked for, please?" Alfred inquired of Jane. "Ferdinand has no 'cuse to interrupt," he apologized.
"Oh, that was all right," Jane quickly assured him. "I wonder if he may have found my--friend?"
"Not likely a young lady," said Alfred with a strong emphasis on young. As if an old lady might be suspected of anything queer, but that a young miss would assuredly hardly be so careless.
"But my friend is very absent minded." Jane prepared him. "She does queer things through forgetfulness."
"Can you come right now?" insisted the waiting Ferd to Jane's porter. "I'se got to get rid of this--lady somehow."
"I'll go too, if I may?" timidly inquired Jane. "I have lost a friend" (this to Ferd). "She is very absent minded."