"What for?" inquired Marker, openly insolent.
"Defrauding the Company by traveling without previously paying the fare, contrary to By-law 18."
The spy broke into a jeering cackle. "You've only got his word for it that I haven't got a ticket," he replied. "I nipped under the seat because I thought he was a lunatic, and a gent can travel that way, I reckon, if he's paid his shot. Here's the ticket, Mister. I'll make tracks to another carriage."
With which he produced a first-class ticket all in order and walked off along the platform, leaving the Duke and the guard looking after him, the former with a curious smile, the latter with dismayed perplexity.
"Well, of all the funny games!" exclaimed the official. "He must have got in at Elstree while I was attending to that there toff, and blessed if he ain't scooting into the same compartment with him now. Your Grace will understand that I couldn't interfere with him, seeing that he had a ticket and you didn't prefer no charge?"
"All right, guard," replied Beaumanoir, with his weary smile. "It really doesn't matter. He seems to have taken me for a madman, while I took him for a dead-head, that's all. These little misunderstandings will arise, you know. We're behind time, eh?"
Taking the hint, the guard retired and started the train, Beaumanoir resuming his seat in a frame of mind only to be described as mixed. He stared out into the gloom of night, wondering what was to come next. His little stratagem had succeeded, in so far as it had revealed Marker as the possessor of a ticket, and therefore as presumably charged with some design against himself, though it had shed no light on the nature of that design. But the adroitness with which the wretched spy had extricated himself made him gnash his teeth because of the impudent reliance on his inability to assign a reason to the guard for fearing an intruder. That in itself was clear evidence that Mr. Marker was under the seat with a very real purpose.
Had that purpose been entirely thwarted by his discovery? was the question which buzzed through the Duke's brain to the tune of the rolling wheels. There had been an air of insolent confidence in the fellow as he showed his ticket and walked away which hardly tallied with total discomfiture. And then, mused Beaumanoir, was there not ground for further apprehension in his selection of a fresh compartment and a fresh traveling companion? Could it be that "the toff" who had entered the train at Elstree was an accomplice, and that Mr. Marker had gone to report to him and concert new measures? It might well be so, for, whether wittingly or no, the swaggering passenger had certainly caused the diversion which had enabled Marker to open the door on the off side and creep under the seat.
The reflection that the spy might have confederates on the train did not add to Beaumanoir's equanimity, and at the next stop he let down the window again and peered along the line of carriages. Sure enough, he caught a glimpse of a head protruding from the compartment into which Marker had disappeared—not the head of Marker himself, but of the imperious person who had played the magnate and distracted the guard. The head was instantly withdrawn, but it had done a useful work in convincing Beaumanoir that he was really an object of interest in that quarter, and not to Marker alone.
"I wish they would do something and end this beastly suspense," the hunted man muttered to himself as the train moved on once more; "though, for the matter of that, they can't do anything till I get out at Tarrant Road—unless they openly come to the door and shoot me at one of the few remaining stoppages."