The surgeon spoke to Avery. Eaton saw by Avery's start of recollection that Harriet Dorne's--or Harriet Santoine's--friend could not have been thinking of her at all during the recent moments. The chances of life or death of Basil Santoine evidently so greatly and directly affected Donald Avery that he had been absorbed in them to the point of forgetting all other interests than his own. Eaton's own thought had gone often to her. Had Connery in his directions said anything to the trainmen guarding the door or to the passengers on the platforms, that had frightened her with suspicions of what had happened here? When the first sense of something wrong spread back to the observation car, what word had reached her? Did she connect it with her father? Was she--the one most closely concerned--among those who had been on the rear platform seeking admittance? Was she standing there in the aisle of the next car waiting for confirmation of her dread? Or had no word reached her, and must the news of the attack upon her father come to her with all the shock of suddenness? Eaton had been about to leave the car, where he now was plainly of no use, but these doubts checked him. "Miss Santoine is in the observation car," Avery said. "I'll get her." The tone was in some way false--Eaton could not tell exactly how. Avery started down the aisle. "One moment, please, Mr. Avery!" said the conductor. "I'll ask you not to tell Miss Santoine before any other passengers that there has been an attack upon her father. Wait until you get her inside the door of this car." "You yourself said nothing, then, that can have made her suspect it?" Eaton asked. Connery shook his head; the conductor, in doubt and anxiety over exactly what action the situation called for,--unable, too, to communicate any hint of it to his superiors to the West because of the wires being down,--clearly had resolved to keep the attack upon Santoine secret for the time. "I said nothing definite even to the trainmen," he replied; "and I want you gentlemen to promise me before you leave this car that you will say nothing until I give you leave."