together. Then in a paralysis of shock, he collapsed on the edge
of my berth and sat there swaying. In my excitement I shook him.

"For Heaven's sake, keep your nerve, man," I said bruskly. "You'll
have every woman in the car in hysterics. And if you do, you'll
wish you could change places with the man in there." He rolled his
eyes.

A man near, who had been reading last night's paper, dropped it
quickly and tiptoed toward us. He peered between the partly open
curtains, closed them quietly and went back, ostentatiously solemn,
to his seat. The very crackle with which he opened his paper added
to the bursting curiosity of the car. For the passengers knew that
something was amiss: I was conscious of a sudden tension.

With the curtains closed the porter was more himself; he wiped his
lips with a handkerchief and stood erect.

"It's my last trip in this car," he remarked heavily. "There's
something wrong with that berth. Last trip the woman in it took an
overdose of some sleeping stuff, and we found her, jes' like that,
dead! And it ain't more'n three months now since there was twins
born in that very spot. No, sir, it ain't natural."

At that moment a thin man with prominent eyes and a spare grayish
goatee creaked up the aisle and paused beside me.

"Porter sick?" he inquired, taking in with a professional eye the
porter's horror-struck face, my own excitement and the slightly
gaping curtains of lower ten. He reached for the darky's pulse and