The incident had attracted little attention from the passengers who were hurrying from the train.  Their minds were too intent upon other things to more than glance at this little ripple on the surface of life.  Those who had chanced to notice the woman’s agitation had seen, also, that she was being cared for; and so had passed on, giving the scene no second thought.

When the man returned from the street to his grips on the depot platform, the hacks and hotel buses were gone.  As he stood looking about, questioningly, for some one who might direct him to a hotel, his eyes fell upon a strange individual who was regarding him intently.

Fully six feet in height, the observer was so lean that he suggested the unpleasant appearance of a living skeleton.  His narrow shoulders were so rounded, his form was so stooped, that the young man’s first thought was to wonder how tall he would really be if he could stand erect.  His long, thin face, seamed and lined, was striking in its grotesque ugliness.  From under his craggy, scowling brows, his sharp green-gray eyes peered with a curious expression of baffling, quizzing, half pathetic, and wholly cynical, interrogation.  He was smoking a straight, much-used brier pipe.  At his feet, lay a beautiful Irish Setter dog.

Half hidden by a supporting column of the depot portico—­as if to escape the notice of the people in the automobile—­he had been watching the woman with the disfigured face, with more than casual interest.  He turned, now, upon the young man who had so kindly given her assistance.

In answer to the stranger’s inquiry, with a curt sentence and a nod of his head he directed him to a hotel—­two blocks away.

Thanking him, the young man, carrying his grips, set out.  Upon reaching the street, he involuntarily turned to look back.

The oddly appearing character had not moved from his place, but stood, still looking after the stranger—­the brier pipe in his mouth, the Irish Setter at his feet.

Chapter III

The Famous Conrad Lagrange

When the young man reached the hotel, he went at once to his room, where he passed the time between the hour of his arrival and the evening meal.

Upon his return to the lobby, the first object that attracted his eyes was the uncouth figure of the man whom he had seen at the depot, and who had directed him to the hotel.

That oddly appearing individual, his brier pipe still in his mouth and the Irish Setter at his feet, was standing—­or rather lounging—­at the clerk’s counter, bending over the register; an attitude which—­making his skeleton-like form more round shouldered than ever—­caused him to present the general outlines of a rude interrogation point.