After casting the gleam of a flashlight upon the bunk Danby Force had indicated, she seized the blankets and threw them back.
At once an exclamation escaped Danby’s lips:
“The bag!”
It was true. There, well flattened out beneath the blankets, lay a flexible leather traveling bag. When he had seized upon it, the young man found it unlocked and empty.
“She tricked me,” he murmured. “The bag was not lost. It was hidden. She put on the extra clothes she carried and wore them beneath a long coat. She carried the papers in some concealed pockets. By pretending that the bag was lost she has thrown me completely off her track.
“I was not sure—” He was speaking slowly, calmly now. “I could not be sure that she was what we suspected her of being. I had been away from our plant when she was employed there. I did not believe she knew me, so I followed her. This act, this hiding of the bag proves that she is the person we thought her and that she did know me. Now she has escaped me. She is gone. Who can say how or where? The trail is old by now. I cannot follow her.”
Moving slowly, like one in a dream, he retraced his steps to his place by the fire, then sank gloomily into a chair. For a long time he sat staring into the fire.
“Do something for someone else,” he murmured after poking the fire until it glowed red. “Yes, that’s the thing. That should be the slogan of our generation—do something for someone else. But when there are those who block all your efforts, what then?”
He looked up for a moment. By chance his gaze fell upon a broad window. Through that window one’s eyes beheld a magnificent sight—the topmost peak of the mountain’s jagged crest, rearing high in all its glory.
For a full moment the young man’s gaze remained fixed upon this crown of beauty. Then in a voice mellowed by reverence, he murmured: