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“I’ll be back,” she stated, disregarding the elder woman and speaking to the younger. “And I’m going to find out more about you, too, before I’m done.”

Her step, departing, was brisk and resolute.

In the aisle near the forward door she encountered the flagman.

“There is a man in the smoker I must see at once,” she said. “Will you please go in there and find him and tell him I wish–no, never mind. I see him coming now.”

She went a step or two on to meet the person she sought, halting him in the untenanted space at the end of the coach.

“I want to speak with you, please,” she began.

“Well, you’ll have to hurry,” he told her, “because I’m getting off with my party in less’n five minutes from now. What was it you wanted to say to me?”

“That young girl yonder–I became interested in her. I thought perhaps she had been injured. Then more or less by chance I found out the true facts. I spoke to her; she told me a little about her plight.”

“Well, if you’ve been talking to her what’s the big idea in talking to me?”

His tone was churlish.

“This isn’t mere vulgar curiosity on my part. I have a perfectly proper motive, I think, in inquiring into her case. What is her name.”

“Margaret Vinsolving.”

“Spell it for me, please–the last name?”

He spelled it out, and she after him to fix it in her mind.

“Where does she live–I mean where is her home?”

“Village of Pleasantdale, this state,” shortly.

“Who are her people?”

“She’s got a mother and that’s all, far as I know.”

“What asylum are you taking her to?”

“No asylum. We’re taking her to Doctor Shorter’s Sanitarium back of Peekskill two miles–Dr. Clement Shorter, specialist in nervous disorders–he’s the head.”

“It is a private place then and not a state asylum?”

“You said it.”

“You are connected with this Doctor Shorter’s place, I assume?”

“Yep.”

“In what capacity?”

“Oh, sort of an outside man–look after the grounds and help out generally with the patients and all. And now, say, lady, if that’ll satisfy you I guess I better be stepping along. I got to see about getting this here patient and the matron off the train; that’s the matron that’s setting with her.”

“Just a moment more, please.”

She felt in a fob set under the cuff of her left sleeve and brought forth a small gold badge and held it cupped in her gloved hand for him to see. As he bent his head and made out the meaning of the badge the gruff air dropped from him magically.

“Oh, I see!” he said. “Secret Service, eh? All right, ma’am, what more did you want to know? Only I’d ask you speak brisk because there ain’t so much time.”

“Tell me briefly what you know of that child.”

“Not such a lot, excepting she’s a dangerous lunatic, having been legally adjudged so yestiddy. And her mother’s paying for her keep at a high-class place where she can have special treatment and special care instead of letting her be put away in one of the state asylums. And so I’m taking her there–me and the matron yonder. That’s about all, I guess.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t believe what?”

He was beginning to bristle anew.

“Don’t believe she is insane at all, much less dangerously so. Why, I’ve just been talking with her. We exchanged only a few words, but in all that she said she was so perfectly rational, so perfectly sensible. Besides, one has only to look at her to feel sure some terrible mistake or some terrible injustice is being done. Surely there is nothing eccentric, nothing erratic about her; now is there? You must have been studying her. Don’t you yourself feel that there might have been something wrong about her commitment?”

He shook his head.

“Not a chancet. Everything’s been positively regular and aboveboard. You can’t railroad folks into Doctor Shorter’s place; he’s got too high a standing. Shorter takes no chances with anybody.”