Glover was impatient. "She's somewhere about the car," he exclaimed, "search it." Raz Brown went through the Lalla Rookh from vestibule to vestibule: it was as empty as a ceiling.
Puzzled and annoyed, Glover stood trying to recall the mysterious appearance. He walked back to where he had seen the woman, stood where he had stood and looked where he had looked. She had not seemed to withdraw, as he recalled: the curtains had not closed before the head; it had vanished. The wind sung fine, very fine through the copper screens, the Pintsch light flowed very low into the bright globe, the curtains swung again gracefully to the dip of the car; but the head was gone.
A discussion threw no light on the mystery. On one point, however, Conductor O'Brien was firm. While the conductor and the porter kept up the talk, Glover resumed his preparations for retiring in the stateroom, but O'Brien interfered.
"Don't do it. Don't you do it. I wouldn't sleep in that room now for a thousand dollars."
"Nonsense."
"That's all right. I say come forward."
They made him up a corner in the smoking-room of the 'Frisco car, and he could have slept like a baby had not the conviction suddenly come upon him that he had seen Gertrude Brock. Should he, after all, see her again? And what did it mean? Why was she looking in terror into his stateroom?