In the observation car, I found “Iron Age” ponderously on duty beside Doris who was reading _Harper’s_. A good touch that, I thought; there’s something so disarming about _Harper’s_. But it wasn’t _Harper’s_ alone which made the effect. There was George a couple of seats away and he was reading the _Atlantic Monthly_, with Galsworthy’s “Forsythe Saga” ready beside him for good measure, yet he didn’t appear half so innocuous. This was probably because he wasn’t. The more I looked at George, the more I questioned his general character; but the more I gazed at Doris, the surer I was that--in all but one of the essential senses--she was a “good” girl. Looseness of living simply wasn’t in her make-up. You couldn’t associate her with anything personally depraved or disagreeable. She’d no more steal a diamond ring, left in the ladies’ wash room, than my mother, I felt certain. No; I was confident that her dereliction was highly specialized to the subject represented in that suit case of hers under my seat. I wanted to talk to her about that and about other topics; but old “Iron Age” was asserting a priority claim just now. He looked up at me and cut me dead, signifying of course that just now he and I weren’t to know each other. Doris nodded to me and I to her and I found a chair opposite. Watching Dibley, I perceived that he was in the throes of opening a casual conversation. Of course Doris perceived it, too, and about a minute after I sat down, she dropped her _Harper’s_. Old “Iron Age” dove for it and restored it to her, pompously. She thanked him. He said, “You’re entirely welcome. You’re going to New York?” “Oh, no,” Doris told him. “We’re off at Cleveland.” “Iron Age” gave a glance at me, which eloquently said, “You see, you believed that. Now watch me.” I watched them both and George, too. Evidently she’d told Dibley what she wished and she was at her _Harper’s_ again, as though she enjoyed it. George was at his _Atlantic_ but he was poised; oh, decidedly poised. “Iron Age” had two options, either to stay silent or start something crude like an arrest. But I doubted whether, in spite of his telegrams, he had enough evidence yet. So that was as far as he got in the light talk; and he’d jeered at me! A waiter from the dining car appeared with the usual word for six o’clock; and Doris got up. “We’re going in early,” she volunteered to me, “since we’re off at Cleveland.” This gave Dib another cue to rehearse his superior glance at me. George followed her out of the car and Dibley beckoned me over to him. “Get her talking again,” he told me. “Leave him to me.” When I found her seated alone at a table for two in the dining car, I interpreted Dib’s orders liberally. She smiled at me and, when I asked, “How about my sitting here?” she said, “Oh, I’d like it!” So there I was across the table from her, ordering her supper and mine together.