However, on reflection, he quite understood that she could have had no

difficulty in boarding the midnight train for New York without being

noticed by him; because he was not expecting her to do such a thing

and he had paid no attention to the group of passengers emerging from

the waiting room when the express rolled in.

"This is rather funny," he thought. "I wish I could find her. I wish

she'd be friendly enough to pay me a visit. Scheherazade is certainly

an entertaining girl. And it's several hours to New York."

He lingered a while longer, but seeing and hearing nothing except

darkness and assorted snores, he stepped into his stateroom and locked

the door again.

Sleep was now impossible; the idea of Scheherazade prowling in the

dark corridor outside amused him intensely, and aroused every atom of

his curiosity. Did the girl really expect an opportunity to steal the

box? Or was she keeping a sinister eye on him with a view to summoning

accomplices from vasty metropolitan deeps as soon as the train

arrived? Or, having failed at Brookhollow, was she merely going back

to town to report "progress backward"?

He finished his mineral water, and, still feeling thirsty, rang, on

the chance that the porter might still be awake and obliging.

Something about the entire affair was beginning to strike him as

intensely funny, and the idea of foreign spies slinking about

Brookhollow; the seriousness with which this young girl took herself

and her mission; her amateur attempts at murder; her solemn mention of

the Turkish Embassy--all these excited his sense of the humorous. And

again incredulity crept in; and presently he found himself humming

Irwin's immortal Kaiser refrain: "Hi-lee! Hi-lo!

Der vinds dey blow

Joost like die wacht am Rhine!

Und vot iss mine belongs to me,

Und vot iss yours iss mine!"

There came a knock at his door; he rose and opened it, supposing it to

be the porter; and was seized in the powerful grasp of two men and

jerked into the dark corridor.

One of them had closed his mouth with a gloved hand, crushing him

with an iron grip around the neck; the other caught his legs and

lifted him bodily; and, as they slung him between them, his startled

eyes caught sight of Ilse Dumont entering his drawing-room.

It was a silent, fierce struggle through the corridor to the front

platform of the vestibule train; it took both men to hold, overpower,

and completely master him; but they tried to do this and, at the same

time, lift the trap that discloses the car steps. And could not manage

it.

The instant Neeland realised what they were trying to do, he divined

their shocking intention in regard to himself, and the struggle became

terrible there in the swaying vestibule. Twice he nearly got at the

automatic pistol in his breast pocket, but could not quite grasp it.

They slammed him and thrashed him around between them, apparently

determined to open the trap, fling him from the train, and let him

take his chances with the wheels.




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