“Go up ahead,” he said to the brakeman, “and bring back the porter from the club car. Maybe he’ll know something. This looks like one of the line’s blotters.”
The porter, brought in by the brakeman, eyed the body cautiously.
“Yes, suh,” he said. “That’s the one, suh. He give me a letter, suh, jus’ a li’l while ago. I got it heah, Misteh Conductuh, right heah in the mail foh Truckee.”
While he spoke, he had been searching through the mail for Truckee. There was no envelope with Stephen Laird’s name on the corner.
Meanwhile the observation-car porter and the brakeman had been having trouble keeping curious passengers out of the car. The brakeman called to the conductor.
“Here’s a gentleman who says he’s from the newspapers, conductor. Shall I let him in?”
The conductor nodded his assent. A man bustled forward, dressed, like the doctor, in pajamas and trousers. He showed the conductor his credentials. He was a correspondent from one of the newspaper syndicates, returning from a Western story.
The conductor told this man what he knew about the murder. The latter’s eyes glistened. This was a fine story. “Murder on the Mountain Limited.” He could already see the headlines.
He made a special note of the mysterious last words of Stephen Laird.
“Laird said something, too, about eyes,” remarked the conductor thoughtfully. “Green eyes, as I remember it. But that was when I first got there. This is all I have written down: ‘In the box,’ and then ‘see,’ and then this about ‘Tag A,’ that he tried to spell.”