With nobody whatever having any business in the car, a car out of service, carried as one carries a locked and empty satchel—yet the curtains of Section Eleven, next his stateroom, were parted slightly, and the half-light from above streamed on a woman's loose hair. She was not looking toward where he stood; her face was turned from him, and as she clasped the curtain she was looking into his stateroom. What the deuce! thought Glover. A woman passenger in a dead sleeper? He balanced himself to the dizzy wheel of the truck under him, and waited for her to look his way—since she must be looking for the porter—but the head did not move. The curtains swayed with the jerking of the car, but the woman in Eleven looked intently into the dark stateroom. What did it mean? Glover determined a shock.
"Tickets!" he exclaimed, sternly—and stood alone in the car.
"Tickets!" The head was gone; not alone that, strangely gone. How? Glover could not have told. It was gone. The Pintsch burned dim; the Teton song crooned through the ventilators; the wheels of the Lalla Rookh struck muffled at the fish-plates; the curtains of Section Eleven swung slowly in and out of the berth—but the head was not there.
A creepy feeling touched his back; his first impulse was to ignore the incident, go into the stateroom and lie down. Then he thought he might have alarmed the passenger in Eleven when he had first entered. Yet there was, officially at least, no passenger in Eleven; plainly there was nothing to do but to call the conductor. He went forward. O'Brien was sorting his collections in the smoking-room of the next car. Raz Brown, awake—nominally, at least—sat by, reading his dream-book.
"Is this the Lalla Rookh porter?" asked Glover. O'Brien nodded.
"Who's your passenger in Eleven back there?" demanded Glover, turning to the darky.
"Me?" stammered Raz Brown.
"Who's your fare in Eleven in Lalla Rookh?"
"My fare? Why, I ain't got nair 'a fare in Lalla Rookh. She's dead, boss."
"You've got a woman passenger in Eleven. What are you talking about? What's the matter with you?"