“What—we all alone?” he asked Seagraves. Then he caught sight of the two lonely passengers at the far end of the car. “No; two others,” he murmured, answering his own question.
He was turning his gaze away from the man with the handkerchief over his face when something, Seagraves noted, drew his eyes inquiringly back to the sleeper’s hunched figure. The movement caused Seagraves to follow Brandon’s scrutiny. He marked the fact that the handkerchief had fallen from their fellow-passenger’s face, and—was it because of Olga’s suggestion, or was it merely a silly midnight fancy?—he assuredly seemed to trace a certain vague resemblance between the solitary sleeper and the notorious Paul Slavsky, long ago dead.
The idea brought with it a queer, though distinct, sense of unpleasantness. The booming voice of Brandon, breaking in upon his wholly disagreeable train of thought, was highly reassuring.
“Huh!” laughed the Inspector, “I thought I recognized that chap.”
At a quarter to one, Seagraves shook Brandon out of a doze and said, “Keep the lady company for a few minutes. I’m going into the smoker.”
“All right, Joe,” drawled Brandon opening his slightly reddened eyes and seeming to be perfectly wide awake.
Seagraves disappeared into the smoking-room, returning some ten or fifteen minutes later. To his surprise he noted that Brandon, evidently not caring to take a chance on Olga’s diving out of the open window, had handcuffed her fast to the seat and had once more fallen asleep. Olga herself appeared a trifle more cheerful. She even smiled, though somewhat wearily, as Seagraves resumed his seat beside her.
“I told you it would be Paul,” the woman whispered to Seagraves, as though determined to share no part of her secret with the despised Brandon. “See,” she insisted, growing almost jubilant, “it is my brother Paul—come back to me at last!”
“For God’s sake, Olga,” cried Seagraves disgustedly, “stop that foolishness. It gets on my nerves.”
Stillness then for several minutes.