"Do you quite believe the story?" asked the house-physician.

"I don't disbelieve it."

"But what did the stranger do to put him in that condition, which seems
something more than hypnotism?"

"Ah," said Lefevre, "I don't yet understand it; but there are forces in
Nature which few can comprehend, and which only one here and there can
control and use."




Chapter III.

"M. Dolaro."


Next day men talked, newspaper in hand, at the breakfast-table, in the
early trains, omnibuses, and tramcars, of the singular railway outrage.
It was clear its purpose was not robbery. What, then, did it mean?
Some--probably most--declared it was very plain what it meant; while
others,--the few,--after much argument, confessed themselves quite
mystified.

The police, too, were not idle. They made inquiries and took notes here
and there. They discovered that the five o'clock train made but two
pauses on its journey to London--at Croydon and at Clapham Junction. At
neither of those places could a man in a fur coat be heard of as having