He left the washroom, and the sound of the closing of a door which came to Eaton a half-minute later told that he had gone out the front end of the car.
As the three sat waiting in the washroom, no one spoke. Eaton, looking past Avery, gazed out the window at the bank of snow. Eaton understood fully that the manner in which the evidence against him was being presented to him was not with any expectation that he could defend himself; Avery and Connery were obviously too certain of their conclusion for that; rather, as it was being given thus under Avery's direction, it was for the effect upon Harriet Santoine and to convince her fully. But Eaton had understood this from the first. It was for this reason he had not attempted to deny having rung Santoine's bell, realizing that if he denied it and it afterwards was proved, he would appear in a worse light than by his inability to account for or assign a reason for his act. And he had proved right in this; for the girl had not been convinced. So now he comprehended that something far more convincing and more important was to come; but what that could be, he could not guess.
As he glanced at her, he saw her sitting with hands clasped in her lap, pale, and merely waiting. Avery, as though impatient, had got up and gone to the door, where he could look out into the passage. From time to time people had passed through the car, but no one had stopped at the washroom door or looked in; the voices in the washroom had not been raised, and even if what was going on there could have attracted momentary attention, the instructions to pass quickly through the car would have prevented any one from stopping to gratify his curiosity. Eaton's heart-beat quickened as, listening, he heard the car door open and close again and footsteps, coming to them along the aisle, which he recognized as those of Conductor Connery and some one else with him.
Avery returned to his seat, as the conductor appeared in the door of the washroom followed by the Englishman from Eaton's car, Henry Standish. Connery carried the sheet on which he had written the questions he had asked Eaton, and Eaton's answers.
"What name were you using, Mr. Eaton, when you came from Asia to the United States?" the conductor demanded.