When the colonel awoke next morning the train was running smoothly over the Iowa prairies, while low hills and brick factory chimneys announced Council Bluffs. The landscape was wide and monotonous; a sweep of illimitable cornfields in their winter disarray, or bleakly fresh from the plow, all painted with a palette holding only drabs and browns; here and there a dab of red in a barn or of white in windmill or house; but these livelier tints so scattered that they were no more than pin spots on the picture. The very sky was as dimly colored as the earth, lighter, yet of no brighter hue than the fog which smoked up from the ground. Later in the spring this same landscape would be of a delicate and charming beauty; in summer or autumn it would make the beholder’s pulses throb with its glorious fertility; but on a blurred March morning it was as dreary as the reveries of an aging man who has failed.
Nevertheless, Rupert Winter’s first conscious sensation was not depression, only a little tingle of interest and excitement, such as stings pleasantly one who rises to a prospect of conflict in which he has the confidence of his own strength. “By Jove!” he wondered, “whatever makes me feel so kiddish?”
His first impulse was to peep through his curtains into the car. It wore its early morning aspect of muffled berths and stuffy curtains, among which Miss Smith’s trig, carefully finished presence in a fresh white shirt-waist, attended by the pleasant whiffs of cologne water, gave the beholder a certain refreshing surprise. One hand (white and firm and beautifully cared for) held a wicker bottle, source of the pleasant whiffs; her sleek back braids were coiled about her comely head, and the hair grew very prettily in a blunted point on the creamy nape of her neck. It was really dark brown hair, but it looked black against the whiteness of her skin. She had very capable-looking shoulders, the colonel noted, and a flat back; perhaps she wasn’t pretty, but in a long while he had not seen a more attractive-looking woman. She made him think of a Bonne Celine rose, somehow. He could hear her talking to some one behind the berth’s curtains. Could those doleful moans emerge from Archie? Could a Winter boy be whimpering about the jar of the train in that fashion? Immediately he was aware that the sufferer was Randall, for Miss Smith spoke: “Drink the tea, and lie down again, I’ll attend to Mrs. Winter. Don’t you worry!”
“Getting solid with Randall,” commented the colonel. “Which is she—kind-hearted, or an accomplished villainess? Well, it’s interesting, anyhow.”
By the time he had made his toilet the train was slacking speed ready to halt in Council Bluffs, and all his suspicions rushed on deck again at the sight of Miss Smith and Archie walking outside.
He joined them, and he had to admit that Miss Smith looked as pleased as Archie at his appearance. Nor did she send a single furtive glance, slanting or backward, while they walked in the crisp, clean air. Once the train had started and Miss Smith was in the drawing-room, breakfasting with Mrs. Winter and Archie, he politely attended Mrs. Millicent through the morning meal in the dining-car. It was so good a meal that he naturally, although illogically, thought better of Miss Smith’s prospects of innocence; and cheerily he sought Haley. He found him in the smoking compartment of the observation-car, having for companions no less personages than the magnate and a distinguished-looking New Englander, who, Rupert Winter made no doubt, was a Harvard professor of rank and renown among his learned kind. He knew the earmarks of the species. The New Englander’s pencil was flying over a little improvised pad of telegraph blanks, while he listened with absorbed interest to Haley’s rich Irish tones. There was a little sidewise lunge of Haley’s mouth, a faint twinkle of Haley’s frank and simple eyes which the colonel appraised at very nearly their real value. He knew that it isn’t in Irish-American nature to perceive a wide-open ear and not put something worth hearing into it. Besides, his sharp ears had brought him a key to the discourse, a sorrowful remark of the sergeant’s as he entered: “Yes, sor, thim wather torchures is terrible!”
He glanced suspiciously from one of Haley’s audience to the other. The newspaper cartoonist had pictured on all kinds of bodies of preying creatures, whether of the earth or air, the high brows, the round head, the delicate features, the thin cheeks, the straight line of the mouth, and the mild, inexpressive eyes of the man before him. He had been extolled as a far-sighted benefactor of the world, and execrated picturesquely as the king of pirates who would scuttle the business of his country without a qualm.
Winter, amid his own questionings and problems, could not help a scrutiny of a man whose power was greater than that of medieval kings. He sat consuming a cigarette, more between his fingers than his lips; and glancing under drooping eyelids from questioner to narrator. At the colonel’s entrance he looked up, as did Haley, who rose to his feet with an unconscious salute. “I’d be glad to spake wid youse a minnit, if I might, General,” said Haley, “about where I put your dress-shute case, sor.”
The colonel, of course, did not expect any remarks about a suit case when he got Haley by himself at the observation end of the car; but what he did get was of sufficient import to drive out of his mind a curt lecture about blackening the reputation of the army with lies about the Philippines. Haley had told him that he had seen the man with the two moles on his face jump out of his own car at Council Bluffs. He had simply stood on the platform, looking to right and left for a moment; then he had swung himself back on the car. Haley had watched him walk down the aisle and enter the drawing-room. He did not come out; Haley had found out that the drawing-room belonged to Edwin S. Keatcham, “the big railroad man, sor.”
“It doesn’t seem likely that he would be an accomplice of a kidnapper,” mused the colonel. “The man might have gone in there while he was out.”