He could pretend to enter their compartment by mistake, and impress their faces indelibly upon his memory, to be used at some future time. With this object in view Phil placed his hand on the door-knob trying to turn it, only to find the latch had fallen from within. Frustrated, he stood thinking excitedly as to what his next move should be. The door of his own compartment suddenly opened and Sydney Monroe, his companion and classmate at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, gazed in surprise at the stern set face of his friend.
“What’s the matter, Phil?” he exclaimed. “You look as if you’d just seen a ghost. Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
Phil held his hand up for silence and entered his own compartment.
“There are people in there,” he exclaimed excitedly, indicating with a nod, “whom we must recognize and remember. It’s the most barefaced case of conspiracy that I’ve ever known.” And then he detailed almost word for word what he had heard.
While he was yet talking and his two companions were listening eagerly, consternation growing in their excited minds, the train again came to a halt, but for just a moment, and then was off again.
A few minutes later it was plain that the country had been left behind and that the suburbs of Tokyo were at hand. The train passed through row after row of tiny wooden dwellings, built like card houses, appearing to be ready for some giant hand to smooth them flat. On sped the train across miniature stone bridges and through beautifully laid out parks, until a sudden screech of the whistle and the gripping of the brakes announced that the journey was over, and Tokyo had been reached.
Phil scarcely waited for the train to stop before he was in the passage, gazing about in the gloom (the passage being unlighted) for the occupants of the next compartment. Its door stood open, but they were not there. He rushed to the platform, but he saw no strange faces, only his brother officers and the sailors. What could it mean? Then he understood the meaning of the stop only a few miles before the train reached Tokyo. The occupants of the next compartment were men of consequence, and even a special train ordered by the Emperor of Japan could be stopped at their will.
“Well, I shan’t forget that voice, anyway,” Phil exclaimed disappointedly to his companions while the three moved slowly toward the exit gate.
CHAPTER II
IN THE EMPEROR’S GARDENS
“If we could only have had a glimpse of the man’s face,” Phil Perry exclaimed dejectedly as the three naval men who had occupied the compartment together were driving rapidly from the railroad station. “Who can he be, and to whom was he talking?”