"Extraordinarily exposed in these sleeping cars of yours, isn't one, wouldn't you say?" the Englishman appealed across the aisle.
"Exposed?" Avery repeated, more inclined to encourage the conversation.
"I say, is it quite the custom for a train servant—whenever he fancies he should—to reach across one, sleeping?"
"He means the porter closed his window during the night," Eaton explained to Avery.
"Quite so; and I knew nothing about it—nothing at all. Fancy! There was I in the bunk, and the beggar comes along, pulls my curtains aside, reaches across me—"
"It got very cold in the night," Avery offered.
"I know; but is that any reason for the beggar invading my bunk that way? He might have done anything to me! Any one in the car might have done anything to me! Any one in your bally corridor-train might have done anything. There was I, asleep—quite unconscious; people passing up and down the aisle just the other side of a foolish fall of curtain! How does any one know one of those people might not be an enemy of mine? Remarkable people, you Americans—inconsistent, I say. Lock your homes with most complicated fastenings—greatest lock-makers in the world—burglar alarms on windows; but when you travel, expose yourselves as one wouldn't dream of exposing oneself elsewhere. Amazing places, your Pullman coaches! Why, any one might do anything to any one! What's to stop him, what?"
Eaton, suddenly reminded of his telegram, put a hand into his pocket and fingered the torn scraps; he had meant to remove and destroy them, but had forgotten. He glanced at Harriet Dorne.
"What he says is quite true," she observed. She was smiling, however, as most of the other passengers were, at the Englishman's vehemence.
They engaged in conversation as they breakfasted—a conversation in which Avery took almost no part, though Miss Dorne tried openly to draw him in; then the sudden entrance of Connery, followed closely by a stout, brusque man who belonged to the rear Pullman, took Eaton's attention and hers.