over this mysterious passenger, who did not seem, as yet, to have
made any preparations for leaving his place. Mr. Hamilton Fynes
was seated at a table covered with papers, but he was leaning
back as though he had been or was still asleep. The
station-master stepped forward, and as he did so the attendant
came hurrying out to the platform, and, pushing back the porters,
called to him by name.

"Mr. Rice," he said, "If you please, sir, will you come this
way?"

The station-master acceded at once to the man's request and
entered the saloon. The attendant clutched at his arm nervously.
He was a pale, anaemic-looking little person at any time, but his
face just now was positively ghastly.

"What on earth is the matter with you?" the station-master asked
brusquely.

"There's something wrong with my passenger, sir," the man
declared in a shaking voice. "I can't make him answer me. He
won't look up, and I don't--I don't think he's asleep. An hour
ago I took him some whiskey. He told me not to disturb him
again--he had some papers to go through."

The station-master leaned over the table. The eyes of the man who
sat there were perfectly wide-open, but there was something
unnatural in their fixed stare,--something unnatural, too, in the
drawn grayness of his face.