"I'll help you." Eaton took off his coat and vest and handed them
over. The conductor put them on a seat while he felt over his prisoner
for weapons or other concealed objects. Eaton handed him a
pocket-knife, and the key to his traveling-bag--he had no other
keys--from his trousers pockets. The conductor discovered nothing
else. He found a pencil--but no papers or memorandum book--a plain
gold watch, unengraved, and a bill-fold containing seven hundred
dollars in United States bank-notes in the vest. Connery wrote out a
receipt for the money and handed it to his prisoner. He returned the
other articles. In the coat, the conductor found a handkerchief and in
another pocket the torn scraps of the telegram delivered to Eaton in
his berth.
"That's the one we had the fuss over in the dining car," Eaton
volunteered, as the conductor began fitting the scraps together.
"You forgot to completely destroy it, eh?"
"What was the use?" Eaton took up the other's point of view. "You had
a copy anyway."
"You might have wanted to get rid of it since the discovery of the
murder."
"Murder?"
"I guess it's the same thing." The conductor dropped the scraps into
an envelope and put it in his pocket. He examined the coat for a
tailor's name.
"That coat was copied by a Chinaman in Amoy from the coat I had before.
Before the new one was made, I took out the name of the other tailor so
it wouldn't be copied too," Eaton remarked in explanation of the lack
of any mark. Connery handed back the coat, went out and locked the
door behind him.
Eaton opened his traveling bag and checked over the contents. He could
tell that everything in it had been again carefully examined, but
nothing more had been taken except the small Chinese-English
dictionary; that was now gone. There had been nothing in the bag to
betray any other identity than the one he had given. Eaton put the bag
away and went back to his seat by the window.
The clear, bright day was drawing toward its dusk: there had been no
movement or attempt to move the train all day. About six o'clock, as
people began passing forward to the diner, Connery appeared again with
a waiter from the dining car bearing a tray with dinner.
"This is 'on' the Department of Justice, Conductor?" Eaton tried to ask
lightly.
"The check is a dollar twenty. If you want this, I'll charge it
against your money which I have."
"Make it a dollar, forty-five then," Eaton directed. "Remember the
waiter."
The black boy grinned and spread the table.
"How is Mr.--" Eaton began.
"Dorne?" Connery put in sharply.
"Thanks," said Eaton. "I understand. How is he?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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