"Father could not have rung it; Dr. Sinclair says that is impossible. So its being rung shows that some one was at the berth, some one must have seen Father lying there and—and rung the bell, but did not tell any one about Father. That could hardly have been an innocent person, Mr. Eaton."
"Or a guilty one, Miss Santoine, or he would not have rung the bell at all."
"I don't know—I don't understand all it might mean. I have tried not to think about anything but Father."
"Is that all they have learned?"
"No; they have found the weapon."
"The weapon with which your father was struck?"
"Yes; the man who did it seems not to have realized that the train was stopped—or at least that it would be stopped for so long—and he threw it off the train, thinking, I suppose, we should be miles away from there by morning. But the train didn't move, and the snow didn't cover it up, and it was found lying against the snowbank this afternoon. It corresponds, Dr. Sinclair says, with Father's injuries."
"What was it?"
"It seems to have been a bar of metal—of steel, they said, I think, Mr. Eaton—wrapped in a man's black sock."
"A sock!" Eaton's voice sounded strange to himself; he felt that the blood had left his cheeks, leaving him pale, and that the girl must notice it. "A man's sock!"