Presently cigars were lighted and the majority of the ladies left the restaurant car to return to their several compartments. Ascott, Van Buren and Hamilton Gould, however, had followed Mrs. Bigelow and the Princess Danidoff as they left the carriage, while behind them the man with the silvery hair had risen from his seat. The conversation was resumed in the corridor. A window stood open, and Mr. Van Buren begged permission to smoke a cigarette. Then observing that Sonia Danidoff was about to do the like: “May I give you a light?” he asked the princess, who thanked him for the offer. “Egad!” exclaimed the millionaire next moment, “what a nuisance! I thought I had my lighter in my vest pocket, and now I can’t find it; I must have left it in my portmanteau.” A bantering voice was heard behind him: “Or rather, haven’t you perhaps had it stolen, sir?” Van Buren wheeled round; it was the man with the silvery hair who had spoken. Without appearing to pay any heed to the astonishment he provoked, the man went on: “You must know that these _trains de luxe_, such as the one we are in, are often worked by pickpockets, and that these gentry find a malicious satisfaction in robbing passengers even of articles of little value, simply with the object of keeping their hand in.” Van Buren did not know what to say, Mrs. Bigelow smiled nervously, while not without a touch of anxiety, the Princess Sonia Danidoff, whose lips were trembling a little, murmured with a forced laugh: “Pooh! we ought not to be afraid, surely, seeing the renowned Tom Bob is with us ... but is he really with us?” “Why, yes!” cried Hamilton Gould. “I’m ready to wager he is.” “Will you show us the man?” demanded Mrs. Bigelow. “Perhaps I may, who knows?” Then all burst out laughing; Ascott had just drawn their attention to the smoking compartment at the far end of the car, where a passenger lay fast asleep, adding the suggestion: “Perhaps it’s that gentleman.” First the men, then the ladies, all equally amused and curious, stole one by one to peep in at the traveller who was still fast asleep, little dreaming of the interest he aroused. But the man of the silvery hair again drew attention to himself by his criticism of Ascott’s identification. “It shows a want of perspicacity, sir,” he declared, “to take the gentleman sleeping there for Tom Bob. In the first place a detective does not sleep; besides which, one has only to look at your man in the smoking carriage to be quite sure, first, that he is a Frenchman; that is plain from the cut of his clothes, and second, that he is an officer, in fact I should say an officer actually serving with the colours.” Much impressed, Sonia Danidoff drew nearer to the speaker: “And what tells you that, sir?” The man bowed gravely.