"I assume it because it must be so. You'd been in Seattle--or at least you had been in America--for not less than five days. In fact, Mr. Eaton, you had been on this side of the water for as many as eleven days, had you not?" "Eleven days?" Eaton repeated. "Yes; for it was just eleven days before this train left Seattle that you came to the house of Mr. Gabriel Warden and waited there for him till he was brought home dead!" Eaton, sitting forward a little, looked up at the conductor; his glance caught Avery's an instant; he gazed then to Harriet Santoine. At the charge, she had started; but Avery had not. The identification, therefore, was Connery's, or had been agreed upon by Connery and Avery between them; suggestion of it had not come from the Santoines. And Connery had made the charge without being certain of it; he was watching the effect, Eaton now realized, to see if what he had accused was correct. "What do you mean by that?" Eaton returned. "What I said. You came to see Gabriel Warden in Seattle eleven days ago," Connery reasserted. "You are the man who waited in his house that night and whom every one has been looking for since!" "Well?" inquired Eaton. "Isn't that so?" Connery demanded. "Or do you want to deny that too and have it proved on you later?" Again for a moment Eaton sat silent. "No," he decided, "I do not deny that." "Then you are the man who was at Warden's the night he was murdered?" "Yes," said Eaton, "I was there that evening. I was the one who came there by appointment and waited till after Mr. Warden was brought home dead." "So you admit that?" Connery gloated; but he could not keep from Eaton a sense that, by Eaton's admission of the fact, Connery had been disappointed. Avery too plainly had expected Eaton to deny it; the identification of Eaton with the man who had waited at Warden's was less a triumph to Avery, now that it was confessed. Indeed, Eaton's heart leaped with quick gratitude as he now met Harriet Santoine's eyes and as he heard her turning it into a fact in his favor. "All you have brought against Mr. Eaton is that he has been indefinite in his replies to your questions or has refused answers; isn't that all, Don?" she said. "So if Mr. Eaton is the one who had the appointment with Mr. Warden that night, does not that explain his silence?" "Explain it?" Avery demanded. "How?" "We have Mr. Warden's word that Mr. Eaton came that night because he was in trouble--he had been outrageously wronged, Don. He was in danger. Because of that danger, undoubtedly, he has not made himself known since. May not that be the only reason he has avoided answering your questions now?" "No!" Avery jerked out shortly. Eaton's heart, from pulsating fast with Harriet Santoine's attempt at his defense, now constricted with a sudden increase of his terror and anxiety.