"Beg pardon. I was looking for your ticket. I'm the conductor. It's all right."
Roy thought the voice did not sound a bit like the voice of the conductor, who had spoken to him some time before. Nor could the boy understand why a conductor should be feeling under his pillow for his ticket, when Roy had, as was the custom, given him the bits of pasteboard, including his berth check, earlier in the evening. The conductor had said he would keep them until morning, to avoid the necessity of waking Roy up to look at them during the night.
"That's queer," thought the boy.
He sat up in bed, and thrust his head through the curtains that hung down in front of his berth. Down the aisle, which was dimly lighted, he saw a man hurrying toward the end of the car—the end where the smoking apartment was.
"That wasn't the conductor," said Roy to himself. "He has two brass buttons on the back of coat, and this chap hasn't any. I believe he was a thief, after my money. Lucky I didn't put it under my pillow, or he'd have it now. I must be on the watch. No wonder Billy Carew warned me to be careful. I wonder who that fellow was?"
Roy had half a notion to get up and inform a porter or the conductor what had happened, but he did not like to dress in the middle of the night, and go hunting through the sleeping car for someone to speak to about the matter.
"I'll just be on the watch," thought Roy, "and if he comes back I'll be ready for him."
However, he was not further disturbed that night, and soon fell asleep again, not forgetting, however, the precaution of hiding his pocketbook in the middle of his bed, under the blankets, where, if thieves tried to take it, they would first have to get him out of the berth.
Roy awakened shortly after sunrise the next morning. He was accustomed to early rising at the ranch, and this habit still clung to him. He managed to dress, while sitting on the edge of his berth, and then he reached down under the edge of it on the floor of the car, where, the night before, he had left his shoes. To his surprise they were gone.
"That's funny," he thought. "I wonder if the fellow who didn't get my money, took my shoes for spite?"