"Probably." The answer was given with great hesitation. "If I go by
this train at all, that is to say."
"Have you any doubts?"
"Why, yes. To tell you the truth, I dread the journey. I have been
doing so ever since--since I felt it must be made. Now I find it ever
so much worse than I expected."
"Why is that, if I may ask?"
"You see, I am travelling alone, practically alone that is to say,
with only my maid."
"And your child," I added rather casually, with no second thought, and
I was puzzled to understand why the chance phrase evoked another vivid
blush.
"The child! Oh, yes, the child," and I was struck that she did not say
"my" child, but laid rather a marked stress on the definite article.
"That of course increases your responsibility," I hazarded, and she
seized the suggestion.
"Quite so. You see how I am placed. The idea of going all that way in
an empty train quite terrifies me."
"I don't see why it should."
"But just think. There will be no one in it, no one but ourselves. We
two lone women and you, single-handed. Suppose the five attendants and
the others were to combine against us? They might rob and murder us."
"Oh, come, come. You must not let foolish fears get the better of your
common sense. Why should they want to make us their victims? I believe
they are decent, respectable men, the employes of a great company,
carefully selected. At any rate, I am not worth robbing, are you? Have
you any special reason for fearing thieves? Ladies are perhaps a
little too reckless in carrying their valuables about with them. Your
jewel-case may be exceptionally well lined."
"Oh, but it is not; quite the contrary," she cried with almost
hysterical alacrity. "I have nothing to tempt them. And yet something
dreadful might happen; I feel we are quite at their mercy."
"I don't. I tell you frankly that I think you are grossly exaggerating
the situation. But if you feel like that, why not wait? Wait over for
another train, I mean?"
I am free to confess that, although my curiosity had been aroused, I
would much rather have washed my hands of her, and left her and her
belongings, especially the more compromising part, the mysterious
treasure, behind at Calais.
"Is there another train soon?" she inquired nervously.
"Assuredly--by Boulogne. It connects with the train from Victoria at
2.20 and the boat from Folkestone. You need only run as far as
Boulogne with this Engadine train, and wait there till it starts. I
think about 6 P.M."
"Will that not lose time?"
"Undoubtedly you will be two hours later at Basle, and you may lose
the connection with Lucerne and the St. Gothard if you want to get on
without delay. To Naples I think you said?"
"I did not say Naples. You said you were going to Naples," she replied
stiffly. "I did not mention my ultimate destination."
"Perhaps not. I have dreamt it. But I do not presume to inquire where
you are going, and I myself am certainly not bound for Naples. But if
I can be of no further use to you I will make my bow. It is time for
me to get back to the train, and for my part I don't in the least want
to lose the Engadine express."
She got up too, and walked out of the buffet by my side.
"I shall go on, at any rate as far as Boulogne," she volunteered,
without my asking the question; and we got into our car together, she
entering her compartment and I mine. I heard her door bang, but I kept
mine still open.
I smoked many cigarettes pondering over the curious episode and my new
acquaintance. How was I to class her? A young man would have sworn she
was perfectly straight, that there could be no guile in this
sweet-faced, gentle, well-mannered woman; and I, with my greater
experience of life and the sex, was much tempted to do the same. It
was against the grain to condemn her as all bad, a depredator, a woman
with perverted moral sense who broke the law and did evil things.
But what else could I conclude from the words I had heard drop from
her own lips, strengthened and confirmed as they were by the
incriminating language of her companion?
"Bother the woman and her dark blue eyes. I wish I'd never come across
her. A fine thing, truly, to fall in love with a thief. I hope to
heaven she will really leave the train at Boulogne; we ought to be
getting near there by now."
I had travelled the road often enough to know it by heart, and I
recognized our near approach only to realize that the train did not
mean to stop. I turned over the leaves of Bradshaw and saw I had been
mistaken; the train skirted Boulogne and never entered the station.
"Well, that settles it for the present, anyhow. If she still wants to
leave the train she must wait now until Amiens. That ought to suit her
just as well."
But it would not; at least, she lost no time in expressing her
disappointment at not being able to alight at Boulogne.
We had hardly passed the place when her maid's (or companion's) square
figure filled the open doorway of my compartment, and in her strong
deep voice she addressed a brief summons to me brusquely and
peremptorily:
"My lady wishes to speak to you."
"And pray what does 'my lady' want with me?" I replied carelessly,
using the expression as a title of rank.
"She is not 'my lady,' but 'my' lady, my mistress, and simply Mrs.
Blair." The correction and information were vouchsafed with cold
self-possession. "Are you coming?"
"I don't really see why I should," I said, not too civilly. "Why
should I be at her beck and call? If she had been in any trouble, any
serious trouble, such as she anticipated when talking to me at the
buffet, and a prey to imaginary alarms since become real, I should
have been ready to serve her or any woman in distress, but nothing of
this could have happened in the short hour's run so far."
"I thought you were a gentleman," was the scornful rejoinder. "A nice
sort of gentleman, indeed, to sit there like a stock or a stone when a
lady sends for you!"
"A lady!" There was enough sarcasm in my tone to bring a flush upon
her impassive face, a fierce gleam of anger in her stolid eyes; and
when I added, "A fine sort of lady!" I thought she would have struck
me. But she did no more than hiss an insolent gibe.
"You call yourself an officer, a colonel? I call you a bounder, a
common cad."
"Be off!" I was goaded into crying, angrily. "Get away with you; I
want to have nothing more to say to you or your mistress. I know what
you are and what you have been doing, and I prefer to wash my hands of
you both. You're not the kind of people I like to deal with or wish to
know."
She stared at me open-mouthed, her hands clenched, her eyes half out
of her head. Her face had gone deadly white, and I thought she would
have fallen there where she stood, a prey to impotent rage.
Now came a sudden change of scene. The lady, Mrs. Blair, as I had just
heard her called, appeared behind, her taller figure towering above
the maid's, her face in full view, vexed with varying acute emotions,
rage, grief, and terror combined.