As a sudden eddy of the gale about the shed blew the ticket from old Sammy's cold fingers, the young man stooped to recover it. The wind blew off his cloth cap as he did so, and as he bent and straightened before old Sammy, the old man suddenly gasped; and while the traveler pulled on his cap, recovered his ticket and hurried down the platform to the train, the gateman stood staring after him as though trying to recall who the man presenting himself as Philip D. Eaton was.
Connery stepped beside the old man.
"Who is it, Sammy?" he demanded.
"Who?" Sammy repeated. His eyes were still fixed on the retreating figure. "Who? I don't know."
The gateman mumbled, repeating to himself the names of the famous, the great, the notorious, in his effort to fit one to the man who had just passed. Connery awaited the result, his gaze following Eaton until he disappeared aboard the train. No one else belated and bound for the Eastern Express was in sight. The president's order to the conductor and to the dispatcher simply had directed that Number Five would run one hour late; it must leave in five minutes; and Connery, guided by the impression the man last through the gate had made upon him and old Sammy both, had no doubt that the man for whom the train had been held was now on board.
For a last time, the conductor scrutinized old Sammy. The gateman's mumblings were clearly fruitless; if Eaton were not the man's real name, old Sammy was unable to find any other which fitted. As Connery watched, old Sammy gave it up. Connery went out to the train. The passengers who had been parading the platform had got aboard; the last five to arrive also had disappeared into the Pullmans, and their luggage had been thrown into the baggage car. Connery jumped aboard. He turned back into the observation car and then went forward into the next Pullman. In the aisle of this car the five whom Connery had just watched pass the gate were gathered about the Pullman conductor, claiming their reservations. Connery looked first at Eaton, who stood beside his grips a little apart, but within hearing of the rest; and then, passing him, he joined the Pullman conductor.
The three who had passed the gate first—the girl, the man with the glasses and the young man in the cutaway—it had now become clear were one party. They had had reservations made, apparently, in the name of Dorne; and these reservations were for a compartment and two sections in this car, the last of the four Pullmans. As they discussed the disposition of these, the girl's address to the spectacled man made plain that he was her father; her name, apparently, was Harriet; the young man in the cutaway coat was "Don" to her and "Avery" to her father. His relation, while intimate enough to permit him to address the girl as "Harry," was unfailingly respectful to Mr. Dorne; and against them both Dorne won his way; his daughter was to occupy the drawing-room; he and Avery were to have sections in the open car.
"You have Sections One and Three, sir," the Pullman conductor told him. And Dorne directed the porter to put Avery's luggage in Section One, his own in Section Three.
The Englishman who had come by the Japanese steamer was unsupplied with a sleeping-car ticket; he accepted, after what seemed only an automatic and habitual debate on his part, Section Four in Car Three—the next car forward—and departed at the heels of the porter. Connery watched more closely, as now it came the turn of the young man whose ticket bore the name of Eaton. Like the Englishman with the same sort of ticket from Asia, Eaton had no reservation in the sleepers; he appeared, however, to have some preference as to where he slept.
"Give me a Three, if you have one," he requested of the Pullman conductor. His voice, Connery noted, was well modulated, rather deep, distinctly pleasant. At sound of it, Dorne, who with his daughter's help was settling himself in his section, turned and looked that way and said something in a low tone to the girl. Harriet Dorne also looked, and with her eyes on Eaton, Connery saw her reply inaudibly, rapidly and at some length.