“Indeed, yes. But I feel that—”
But Mr. Dow was already talking again. The fellow seemed determined not to let Leonidas finish a sentence, and Leonidas personally didn’t feel equal to out-shouting him.
“I knew there was no one to meet you, sir, so I just up and took charge. Carpe diem, as they used to say at Meredith’s— Do you feel any worse, sir?”
“No,” Leonidas said, “but I should—”
“Really? You’re sure you don’t feel any worse, sir? I thought you looked sort of anguished, just then. You looked funny. You’re probably sore all over, aren’t you? But I do hope,” Mr. Dow rattled on, giving Leonidas no opportunity to say a word, “that you’re not sore with me, sir. I really did my best to— Look, here comes the conductor with a lot of red-faced men. If you’ll just maintain that anguished expression while they ask questions, you might stand to make some money out of this little accident.”
During the interval that followed, Leonidas rather absent-mindedly allowed himself to be thumped and poked and prodded by a brusque little doctor who said there was nothing whatever the matter with Mr. Witherall except a bump on the head, and he’d feel right as rain in a few hours, if only he kept still and didn’t try to move a brick house. Everyone, including Mr. Dow, seemed to think that was a splendid bit of news, and everyone told Leonidas that he was a very lucky man.
They were right, Leonidas decided as he gave his name and address to all the red-faced men. He was a lucky man. He was also something of a fool.
For Leonidas had been doing some rapid thinking.
He had left Southampton on the day he intended, but he had left on a different and faster boat, thereby arriving in New York twenty-four hours earlier than anyone expected. His friends had not been told of the change. And because none of them knew he was coming, no one was going to meet him at the station.
But only Leonidas knew that.
As far as anyone else was concerned, or as far as any passenger on this train knew, he might be awaiting a rousing municipal welcome, with brass bands and confetti streamers, and delegations of distinguished citizens bearing keys to the city.
How had the young, voluble Mr. Dow known otherwise?
But he had. Very definitely and distinctly, Mr. Dow had said, “I knew there was no one to meet you, so I took charge/’
The largest of the red-faced men gave Leonidas a card.
“Thank you, Mr. Witherall. Someone will call on you tomorrow. You’ve been far more co-operative than some of the passengers who—er—were more fortunate. Is that his coat? Let me help you with your coat, Mr. Witherall. There, sir! There you are!”
Once over the first dizziness of standing up, Leonidas felt entirely capable of walking under his own power. Brushing aside someone’s suggestion that he should be carried, he started down the car aisle.
In front of Drawing Room B, he paused and smiled at the red-faced men.
“When I fell in here, I had a small silver pencil in my hand,” he said. “D’you suppose one of you might find it for me? I shouldn’t bother you, but it was given me by my old friend the Maharajah, and I cherish it highly.”
Leonidas always felt that if one had to lie, one might as well do it with a flourish.
“Certainly, Mr. Witherall! Of course, of course!”
The nearest red-faced man thrust open the drawing room door with such force that an attendant, who had already started cleaning, was frightened out of his wits.
While everyone hunted for the mythical pencil, Leonidas looked the room over very thoroughly.
Obviously the place had not been hastily spruced up for his, or anyone else’s, inspection. The cleaner was simply going about his ordinary work. The gray blankets were there, neatly folded, but there certainly was no body, nor any trace of one.
Leonidas hadn’t really expected to find any. But he had proved to his own satisfaction that if there was any conspiracy, it was not one in which the conductor, or the porter, or the red-faced officials played any part. To them, everything concerned with the drawing room was in order, and they were perfectly willing to enter it, or to have him enter. Besides, if they had wanted him out of the way, they easily could have rushed him off to a hospital for observation. But they had made no effort to do anything of the kind. They had been as solicitous and kind as anyone could wish.
Swinging his pince-nez, Leonidas considered the blue serge shoulders of Mr. Dow.
Very definitely, things were boiling down to that chatty young man.
“Suppose,” Leonidas said, “that when the pencil is found, it is sent to me? I’m sure that you gentlemen have other things to do—”
“Sure, Mr. Witherall. You want to get along home. Of course. We’ll find the Maharajah’s pencil and get it to you. Clancy, you go ahead and help Mr. Witherall with the steps.”
As he was trundled along the station platform in the waiting wheel chair, with Clancy and Dow and a bevy of laden porters swarming around him, Leonidas began to feel somewhat like a Maharajah, himself. A Maharajah in a box on an elephant. He tried to remember the proper term.
“Howdah,” he said at last. “Howdah!”
The porter pushing the wheel chair looked vaguely disturbed.
“Yes, suh. I’m okay. You okay, suh?”
“A howdah is a type of litter—er—let it pass.”
The fine points of a howdah, Leonidas decided after noting the porter’s expression, were better left unthrashed.
Besides, he had before him the problem of young Mr. Dow, and what to do about him.
An impartial observer would sum up Mr. Dow as a right-living, right-thinking, good-looking young man, probably a devoted son,
