I had a new respect for the doctor, for any one indeed who could crack even a feeble joke under such circumstances, or who could run an impersonal finger over that wound and those stains.  Odd how a healthy, normal man holds the medical profession in half contemptuous regard until he gets sick, or an emergency like this arises, and then turns meekly to the man who knows the ins and outs of his mortal tenement, takes his pills or his patronage, ties to him like a rudderless ship in a gale.

“Suicide, is it, doctor?” I asked.

He stood erect, after drawing the bed-clothing over the face, and, taking off his glasses, he wiped them slowly.

“No, it is not suicide,” he announced decisively.  “It is murder.”

Of course, I had expected that, but the word itself brought a shiver.  I was just a bit dizzy.  Curious faces through the car were turned toward us, and I could hear the porter behind me breathing audibly.  A stout woman in negligee came down the aisle and querulously confronted the porter.  She wore a pink dressing-jacket and carried portions of her clothing.

“Porter,” she began, in the voice of the lady who had “dangled,” “is there a rule of this company that will allow a woman to occupy the dressing-room for one hour and curl her hair with an alcohol lamp while respectable people haven’t a place where they can hook their—­”

She stopped suddenly and stared into lower ten.  Her shining pink cheeks grew pasty, her jaw fell.  I remember trying to think of something to say, and of saying nothing at all.  Then—­she had buried her eyes in the nondescript garments that hung from her arm and tottered back the way she had come.  Slowly a little knot of men gathered around us, silent for the most part.  The doctor was making a search of the berth when the conductor elbowed his way through, followed by the inquisitive man, who had evidently summoned him.  I had lost sight, for a time, of the girl in blue.

“Do it himself?” the conductor queried, after a businesslike glance at the body.

“No, he didn’t,” the doctor asserted.  “There’s no weapon here, and the window is closed.  He couldn’t have thrown it out, and he didn’t swallow it.  What on earth are you looking for, man?”

Some one was on the floor at our feet, face down, head peering under the berth.  Now he got up without apology, revealing the man who had summoned the conductor.  He was dusty, alert, cheerful, and he dragged up with him the dead man’s suit-case.  The sight of it brought back to me at once my own predicament.

“I don’t know whether there’s any connection or not, conductor,” I said, “but I am a victim, too, in less degree; I’ve been robbed of everything I possess, except a red and yellow bath-robe.  I happened to be wearing the bath-robe, which was probably the reason the thief overlooked it.”

There was a fresh murmur in the crowd.  Some body laughed nervously.  The conductor was irritated.