"Sorry, ma'am," said the Pullman conductor, "but there's not a bit of space left in the chair car, nor the sleeper neither."
"I'm sorry too," said the young woman in the tan-colored tailor-mades. She was smartly hatted and smartly spatted; smart all over from toque-tip to toe-tip. "I didn't know until almost the last minute that I'd have to catch this train, and trusted to chance for a seat."
"Yes'm, I see," commiserated the man in blue. "But you know what the rush is this time of year, and right now on top of all that so many of the soldiers getting home from the other side and their folks coming East to meet 'em and everything. I guess though, miss, you won't have much trouble getting accommodated in one of the day coaches."
"I'll try it," she said, "and thank you all the same."
"Wait a minute," he suggested. "I'll have my porter carry your valise on up to the other cars."
Men of all stations in life were rather given to offering help to Miss Mildred Smith, the distinguished interior decorator and--on the side--amateur investigator for Uncle Sam with a wartime record for services rendered which many a professional might have envied. Perhaps they were the more ready to offer it since the young woman seemed so rarely to need it.
This man's reward was a brisk little nod.
"Please don't bother," she said. "This bag isn't at all heavy, and I'm used to traveling alone and looking out for myself." She footed it briskly along the platform of the Dobb's Ferry station. At the door of the third coach back from the baggage car a flagman stopped her.
"All full up in here, lady," he told her, "but I think maybe you might find some place to sit in the next car beyond. If you'll just leave your grip here I'll bring it along to you after we pull out."
As she reached the door of the coach ahead the train began to move. This coach was comfortably filled--and more than comfortably filled. Into the aisles projected elbows and feet and at either side doubled rows of backs of heads showed above the red plush seats. She shrugged her shoulders; it meant standing for a while at least; probably someone would be getting off soon--this train was a local, making frequent stops. It was not the train she would have chosen had the choosing been left altogether to her, but Mullinix of the Secret Service, her unofficial chief, had called her away from a furnishing and finishing contract at a millionaire's mansion in the country back of Dobb's Ferry to run up state to Troy, where there had arisen a situation which in the opinion of the espionage squad a woman was best fitted to handle, provided only that woman be Miss Mildred Smith. And so on an hour's notice she had dropped her own work and started.