"Not here, Mr. Avery; not here!" Conductor Connery had stepped forward, glancing back into the car to assure himself the disturbance on the platform had not attracted the attention of the passengers in the observation-room. He put his hand on Eaton's arm. "Come with me, sir," he commanded.
Eaton thought anxiously for a moment. He looked to Harriet Santoine as though about to say something to her, but he did not speak; instead, he quietly followed the conductor. As they passed through the observation-car into the car ahead, he heard the footsteps of Harriet Santoine and Avery close behind them.
CHAPTER IX
QUESTIONS
Connery pulled aside the curtain of the washroom at the end of the Santoine car—the end furthest from the drawing-room where Santoine lay.
"Step in here, sir," he directed. "Sit down, if you want. We're far enough from the drawing-room not to disturb Mr. Santoine."
Eaton, seating himself in the corner of the leather seat built against two walls of the room, and looking up, saw that Avery had come into the room with them. The girl followed. With her entrance into the room came to him—not any sound from her or anything which he could describe to himself as either audible or visual—but a strange sensation which exhausted his breath and stopped his pulse for a beat. To be accused—even to be suspected—of the crime against Santoine was to have attention brought to him which—with his unsatisfactory account of himself—threatened ugly complications. Yet, at this moment of realization, that did not fill his mind. Whether his long dwelling close to death had numbed him to his own danger, however much more immediate it had become, he could not know; probably he had prepared himself so thoroughly, had inured himself so to expect arrest and imminent destruction, that now his finding himself confronted with accusers in itself failed to stir new sensation; but till this day, he had never imagined or been able to prepare himself for accusation before one like Harriet Santoine; so, for a moment, thought solely of himself was a subcurrent. Of his conscious feelings, the terror that she would be brought to believe with the others that he had struck the blow against her father was the most poignant.
Harriet Santoine was not looking at him; but as she stood by the door, she was gazing intently at Avery; and she spoke first:
"I don't believe it, Don!"