“Sports,” he thought to himself; and decided to maintain incognito and pass as a Frenchman, if 264 necessary, to escape conversation with the three tired-eyed ones.
So he hung up his hat, opened his novel, and settled back to endure the trip through the rain, now beginning to fall from a low-sagging cloud of watery grey.
After a few minutes the train moved. Later the guard passed and accomplished his duties. Neeland inquired politely of him in French whether there was any political news, and the guard replied politely that he knew of none. But he looked very serious when he said it.
Half an hour from the coast the rain dwindled to a rainbow and ceased; and presently a hot sun was gilding wet green fields and hedges and glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.
Without asking anybody’s opinion, one of the men opposite raised the window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.
“Say, friend,” said an East Side voice at his elbow, “does smoking go?”
He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker—a little, pallid, sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like two holes burnt in a lump of dough.
“Pardon, monsieur?” he said politely.
“Can’t you even pick a Frenchman, Ben?” sneered one of the men opposite—a square, smoothly shaven man with slow, heavy-lidded eyes of a greenish tinge.
The fox-faced man said: