Beaumanoir withdrew his head and sank back in his corner, catching just a glimpse of the guard preparing to spring into his van as it neared him. The station lights flashed past, and the long line of carriages swung into the outer darkness, the little diversion of the important passenger leaving Beaumanoir amused and comforted. To the man who had tramped his weary way along the Bowery to his five-dollar boarding-house within the month this exhibition of class privileges and distinctions was breezily refreshing, seeing that he was now in a position to claim them himself. Immunity from danger through four suburban stations had brought a delicious sense of calm, and as he leaned back he thought how nice it would be to live the life of an English nobleman, free from all sordid cares and humiliations. And if he could wake up at the end of a week and find that his entanglement was all a nightmare, or, at any rate, that Ziegler’s bark was worse than his bite, and that Senator Sherman had safely deposited the bonds at the Bank—well, in that improved state of things what was to prevent his asking Leonie to share his new-found privileges? Then, suddenly, the icy finger touched his heart again. As the blue wreaths of cigarette smoke in which he had conjured up this alluring vision rolled away he became conscious that his gaze, hitherto absorbed and preoccupied with day-dreams, was in reality riveted on a material object under the opposite seat. A very material object indeed—no less than the heel of a man’s boot. At sight of this disturbing element Beaumanoir’s sensations were of a mixed order. First of all, he could see so little of the boot that he could not be sure that there was a man attached to it, though the presumption was in favor of that supposition, for he was quite certain that it had not been there long, or he would have noticed it before. He guessed, so alert had his mind become under stress of emergencies, that the wearer of the boot had got into the compartment on the off side while he himself had been looking out of the window in Elstree station. But if so, and the man had invaded his privacy with sinister design, why should he have plunged at once into a position of utter impotence? No one flattened out under the low seat of a first-class railway carriage is capable of active violence without a preliminary struggle to free himself, during which he would be at the mercy of his intended victim. The only design that Beaumanoir could attribute to him was that he would presently wriggle to the front and use a pistol. He sat and eyed the motionless boot, and then an impulse, swift and irresistible, seized him.