In vain he bribed the guard, who offered to do his best; but the human
contents of a Channel passenger steamer had unwillingly spent the
night in the quaint French port, and the Paris-bound train was already
full.
The best Neeland could do was to find a seat in a compartment where he
interrupted conversation between three men who turned sullen heads to
look at him, resenting in silence the intrusion. One of them was the
fox-faced man he had already noticed on the packet, tender, and
customs dock.
But Neeland, whose sojourn in a raw and mannerless metropolis had not
blotted out all memory of gentler cosmopolitan conventions, lifted his
hat and smilingly excused his intrusion in the fluent and agreeable
French of student days, before he noticed that he had to do with men
of his own race.
None of the men returned his salute; one of them merely emitted an
irritated grunt; and Neeland recognised that they all must be his own
delightful country-men--for even the British are more dignified in
their stolidity.
A second glance satisfied him that all three were undoubtedly
Americans; the cut of their straw hats and apparel distinguished them
as such; the nameless grace of Mart, Haffner and Sharx marked the
tailoring of the three; only Honest Werner could have manufactured
such headgear; only New York such footwear.
And Neeland looked at them once more and understood that Broadway
itself sat there in front of him, pasty, close-shaven, furtive,
sullen-eyed, the New York Paris Herald in its seal-ringed fingers;
its fancy waistcoat pockets bulging with cigars.
"Sports," he thought to himself; and decided to maintain incognito and
pass as a Frenchman, if necessary, to escape conversation with the
three tired-eyed ones.
So he hung up his hat, opened his novel, and settled back to endure
the trip through the rain, now beginning to fall from a low-sagging
cloud of watery grey.
After a few minutes the train moved. Later the guard passed and
accomplished his duties. Neeland inquired politely of him in French
whether there was any political news, and the guard replied politely
that he knew of none. But he looked very serious when he said it.
Half an hour from the coast the rain dwindled to a rainbow and ceased;
and presently a hot sun was gilding wet green fields and hedges and
glistening roofs which steamed vapour from every wet tile.
Without asking anybody's opinion, one of the men opposite raised the
window. But Neeland did not object; the rain-washed air was
deliciously fragrant; and he leaned his elbow on his chair arm and
looked out across the loveliest land in Europe.
"Say, friend," said an East Side voice at his elbow, "does smoking
go?"
He glanced back over his shoulder at the speaker--a little, pallid,
sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like
two holes burnt in a lump of dough.