I was willing to wager that “Iron Age” had no hint of that transfer of luggage to me; and this was no time to tell him about it. Besides, I already was under government orders which I ought to be obeying. So I stepped forward to car No. 424 and to the door labelled E and I tapped upon it. Felice opened it, like the alert little maid she was. As I confronted her, I tried again to place her in the Flamingo Feather; but I couldn’t. She’d been one of the lighting plants, maybe. Then I saw Cleopatra of the Flamingo Feather, Doris Wellington of Caldon’s and the Blackstone and Michigan Boulevard, the daughter of Janvier, engraver of plates and herself shover of the queer. She was alone with her maid in the compartment. “Can I come in?” I said, as she gazed up at me from her seat. “Why, certainly; come right in,” she said immediately, for all the world as though she was doing nothing there but waiting for me. XIV I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS. She nodded to Felice who admitted me and went out. Felice closed the door and, as I remained standing, Doris invited me to sit down. “You remember me?” I asked her. “Erasmus?” she said. “The thriller of Holbein? Certainly.” I dropped upon the seat opposite her and, as I gazed at her, she gazed at me and continued, “Also we were both at Caldon’s, as well as at the Blackstone, weren’t we, Mr. Fanneal?” “You not only remember me but you know me, then.” “Certainly. Don’t you know me? Or what were you doing at the bank?” “How’d you know I went to the bank?” She smiled pleasantly--pleasantly as the Dickens. “Don’t you also know me?” she repeated. “You’re Janvier’s daughter!” I blurted. “Excellent!” she approved me and I felt like a boy in school. She had been leaning slightly forward, not exactly tense, not at ease, either. Poised was the word for it; she’d been poised ever since I entered. Now she sat back more comfortably, being no longer in suspense about how much I knew. “George was your friend Magellan?” I asked. “That’s what you named him.” “Felice also was present at the Feather?” “She was the one who led you into the shed.” “I’m indebted,” I acknowledged; and conversation languished. For a second more I stared at her, as gay and piquant a little thing as ever a twenty-hour-train boasted; then, decidedly stumped as to my next step, I stared a while out the window. Pleasant, Indiana winter scenery was skipping past us. There was clean, light snow on the fields through which stuck brown cornstalks, in those great, even patterns which so intriguingly alter as you dash past. There were frozen brooks with ice-encased willows bent over them; there were lots of agreeable looking farmhouses and farm people Fording to and from little crossroads towns which looked idyllic, rather, whatever the facts may be. “Has Sinclair Lewis spoiled this sort of landscape for you?” Doris asked me suddenly, as though reading my mind. “I’m damned if he has for me!” I said sincerely.