STOLE AWAY
We rather prided ourselves on our cleverness as we sat back in a
reserved compartment of the Lyons-Mediterranean Express, and watched
the Tour Eiffel fade against the sky. We had moved with considerable
celerity. First, we had loaded ourselves and baggage into waiting
taxis in front of the hotel. Then we had driven in these to the Gare
de l'Est, dodged in and out of that whirlpool of life, and reëntered
two other taxis, which we had directed in a reasonless jaunt through
the central district of Paris.
Then Nikka and I had left Hugh and Watkins with the taxis in a
side-street near the Madeleine, and bought the tickets at Cook's. We
had returned to the taxis by a roundabout route, and resumed our
crazy progress from one side of the river to the other and back
again, now crawling up the slopes of Montmartre, now threading the
narrow ways of the Isle du Cite, now buried in the depths of the
Quartier, now spinning through the Bois. We had lunched at a
roadhouse, and returned to the station just in time to climb aboard
the train. And finally, instead of risking the separation entailed
by patronage of the wagons lit, we had elected to seclude ourselves
in a single compartment and sleep as best we could.
Hugh voiced the sentiments of three of us, when he stretched out his
legs and exclaimed:
"What price Toutou's vermin now? I jolly well bet they esteem us
artful dodgers."
Nikka smiled.
"Don't be too sure," he cautioned. "Eluding detection is their
life-work. We are only amateurs."
"Rats," grunted Hugh. "Sherlock Holmes, himself, couldn't have
traced us, eh, Watty?"
"I'm sure I don't see 'ow any one could 'ave followed us, your
ludship," replied the valet wearily. "I don't quite know where I am
myself, sir."
"I fear you haven't any submerged criminal instincts, Watty," chaffed
Hugh. "Now I find myself gettin' a bit of a thrill out of this
hide-and-seek stuff. By Jove, I almost wish we had the police after
us, too. That would be a treat!"
"A fair treat!" groaned Watkins. "I mean no disrespect, your
ludship, and it may be there's no call for the remark, but glad I'll
be when this treasure is safe in the bank and we can go 'ome to
Chesby."
We all laughed.
"How about dinner?" I asked. "Shall we eat by shifts or--"
"What's the use?" returned Hugh. "We haven't anything that will do
'em any good, and besides, they're peekin' into all the compartments
of the Orient Express at this moment."
So we adjourned together to the restaurant-car, dragging Watkins with
us, much against his will; and we ate a jovial meal, all relieved by
the relaxation in the strain which had been imposed upon us and
enjoying the comic reluctance with which Watkins permitted himself to
be forced to sit at the table with Hugh.
"Dammit, Watty!" Hugh finally explained. "You're not a valet on this
trip. You're a brother adventurer. I don't want any valeting. I'm
taking you along for the benefit of your strong right arm."
"All very well, your ludship," mourned Watkins, "but if the Servants'
'All ever 'ears of it it's disgraced I'll be. I couldn't 'old up me
'ead again."
"I'll take care of that. And do you think we'd leave you to eat by
yourself? Suppose that pretty lady of yours came in and sat down
beside you. What would you do?"
"I'd 'eave 'er out the window, your ludship," said Watkins simply.
We loafed through dinner, and complete darkness had shut down when we
returned to our compartment.
"I say," exclaimed Nikka, as he switched on the light. "Was your bag
up there when we left, Hugh?"
Hugh studied the arrangement of the luggage on the racks.
"Can't say," he admitted finally. "But it ought to show if it's been
pawed over."
He hauled it down, and opened it. Everything apparently was in
perfect order.
"Hold on, though," he cried, pursing his lips in a low whistle.
"Watty, you packed this bag. Don't you usually put razors at the
bottom?"
"Yes, your ludship."
"They're on top now. So are my brushes. Everything in order, but--
What do you say to giving this train a look-over, Jack? If there are
any familiar faces aboard we ought to be able to spot them. Nikka,
you and Watty can mount guard here and protect each other until we
come back."
Our car was about in the middle of the train, and at my suggestion,
Hugh went forward, while I followed the corridor toward the rear. I
examined carefully the few persons standing and talking in the
corridors, and violated Rule One of European traveling etiquette by
poking my head into every compartment door which was open. But I did
not see any one who looked at all like any of the members of Toutou's
gang whom I knew. In fact, the passengers were the usual lot one
sees on a Continental through-train.
I was returning and had reached the rear end of our car when I heard
a scream just behind me and a door crashed open. I turned
involuntarily. A woman in black, with a veil flying around her pale
face, ran into the corridor, hesitated and then seized me by the arm.
"Oh, Monsieur! My husband! He is so ill," she cried in French. "He
dies at this moment. I pray you, have you a flask?"
The tears were streaming from her eyes; her face was convulsed with
grief. I reached for my flask.
"Calm yourself, madame," I said. "Do you take this. I will ask the
guard to help in finding a physician."
"Oh, no, no," she protested. "He has fallen. He is so heavy I
cannot lift him. And he dies, monsieur! Oh, mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
I slipped past her into the compartment, flask in hand. One of the
electrics was on, and by its light I discerned the body of a man
huddled face down on the floor in the midst of a litter of baggage
and wraps. I dropped the flask on one of the seats, and leaned over
to hoist the man up. As I did so she reëntered and closed the door,
still babbling brokenly in French.
"If you will help me, please, madame," I suggested. "He is very
heavy, as you say."
"But gladly, monsieur. If you will turn him over--so that we may see
if he breathes."
The man was breathing, stertorously, long, labored gasps. I could
see very little of him, only an unusual breadth of shoulder and a
sweeping black beard. But I experienced an odd sensation of distaste
as I touched him, and snatched my hands away. The woman began to sob.
"Oh, monsieur, he will choke! He will choke!"
I felt like a cur, and promptly braced my hands beneath his chest. I
started to lift him--and my wrists were caught in a human vice. So
quickly that I could not follow his movements, the inert man on the
floor had twisted me down beside him, his knee was on my chest, my
wind was cut off, a pair of steel handcuffs fettered me, and as I
opened my mouth to scream a cotton gag was thrust into place by the
woman who had lured me in.
"Voilà!" she said complacently, knotting the cords of the gag around
my neck. "Or if you'd rather have it in American, Mr. Nash, you're
it. Here, Toutou, get off him. You won't help by crushing his chest
in."
She gave my captor a shove, and he rose with a growl and a menacing
gesture of clawed hands to take a seat by the door. I could see now
that he was Toutou or Teodoreschi, cleverly disguised. The black
beard concealed his intensely pallid face and fell to his waist. A
soft cloth hat hid the fine contour of his skull. His immense chest
was minimized by loose, ill-fitting clothes. And the evil green
eyes, flaring with animal lusts, were ambushed behind dark spectacles.
"Get up," said the woman.
She stooped and put her hands under my arm-pits, exerting a strength
amazing for her size. I staggered up and collapsed on the seat
opposite Toutou and as far away from him as I could get. I was weak
from the vigor of his handling and the nausea his touch had aroused.
Inwardly, I cursed myself for a fool. I had been neatly trapped at
the very moment I was priding myself on being on the alert.
The woman sat down opposite me, tossed back the veil which had been
hanging loosely around her face, picked up a vanity case and
commenced to wipe a generous layer of powder from her cheeks.
She was of a Latin brunette type, with masses of wavy black hair,
great lustrous brown eyes and a piquant beauty of face. As her
profile was exposed to me my memory was jogged awake. She was
Watkins's pretty lady! And I was reinforced in this conclusion when
I recalled the muscle she had exhibited in helping me up, the
off-hand expertness with which she had gagged me, performances
reminiscent of the way the valet had been tripped and despoiled of
his pistol.
After a muttered interchange of words with Toutou in a language I did
not understand, she fastened her gaze on me, and evidently something
of my thoughts was reflected in my face, for she burst out laughing.
"You can't make me out!" she jeered in an unmistakable American
accent. "You're not the first, Mr. Nash. How is old Watkins? He
knows Hélène, too, and I'll bet he never wants to see me again. I
laugh whenever I think of him lying there on the floor gaping up into
his own pistol. And say, you were lucky that day. I came near
fetching a bomb with me, and if I had I sure would have piled it into
that passage. Where would you have been then, eh?"
She chuckled impishly, and Toutou from the shadows at his end of the
compartment--as I came to find out, the man had an animal's aversion
for the light when his enemies were present--snarled a sentence that
was partly French, partly something else.
"Your affectionate friend tells me to quit kidding and get down to
business," she interpreted with a smile. "I'm going to take that gag
out, Mr. Nash, and Toutou is going to sit beside you with his hand on
the back of your neck, and if you so much as start to yip he'll break
it just as if you were a chicken." Her eyes glinted harshly. "Do
you get me? That goes."
I nodded my head. Toutou moved up beside me, and a shiver wrenched
my spine, as his hand unfastened the gag and enclosed my neck.
"We are perfectly safe," she continued. "You are my insane husband.
We are Americans, and I am taking you to relatives in Italy. Toutou
is the physician in charge of the case." She reached inside her
bodice and produced some papers. "Here are your passport and a
medical certificate. Everything is in order.
"The one question is: are you going to do business with us willingly
or must we make you?"
I moistened my lips.
"I don't know what you mean," I answered as coolly as I could. "I
haven't got anything you might want. Search me."
"I will."
She dug out every pocket. She opened my vest, felt for a money-belt,
felt inside my shirt, took my shoes off, examined them carefully by
flash-light, and made sure I had nothing in my socks. She was a
methodical person, that lady. Having searched me, she put everything
back in its proper place, drew on my shoes and laced them. Then she
sat back and stared at me.
"And there was nothing in the baggage," she commented.
I grinned. But quickly subdued my amusement as Toutou snarled beside
me and his steel fingers pressed until my neck was numb.
"None of that, Toutou," she ordered sharply. "What about your
friends, Mr. Nash?"
"None of them has anything."
"But you found something. You must have. What was it?"
She leaned forward, and her eyes bored into mine. I stared back
uncompromisingly.
"I don't want to have to let Toutou hurt you," she warned softly.
At that something in me burst into flame.
"It doesn't matter what he does," I spat at her. "He can't make me
tell you anything. As a matter of fact, I haven't anything definite,
none of us has. But if we had, we wouldn't tell. I'll die before I
help your gang."
That sounds like stage heroics, but I was in an exalted mood. I
could feel Toutou's grip on my neck, and I imagined I didn't have
long to live in any case.
"It's only a question of time," she went on. "You don't realize that
you and your friends are alone in this. You have a great
organization against you. You have as much chance as the fly after
he touched the flypaper. All we have to do is to watch you, and at
the worst we can take the treasure away from you when you find it."
"Then why are you so anxious now?" I rasped with a fair mimicry of
Toutou's feline rage.
"'There's many a slip'--" she quoted. "We don't believe in leaving
anything unnecessarily to chance. You know, you are in a hopeless
position, my friend. Why not talk sensibly? We can easily get rid
of you and your friends, if we care to."
"You'll find it harder, the longer you delay," I flashed at her.
"You are educating us."
She laughed as merrily as a convent schoolgirl.
"So I see." She leaned closer coaxingly. "Now, just between the two
of us--we're Americans, aren't we?--what did you find behind the
chimney? After all, it was Toutou who really saw the point first."
"That's true," I agreed, "but we would have seen it."
"Oh, you would! Then what did you find? Come, let's get this over
with! We'll make an accommodation. Think--"
There was a buzz of voices in the corridor. I heard a dry official
monotone, then Hugh's clipped English French and Nikka's smooth
accent.
"But he must be on the train, Monsieur--"
"Ah, but if--"
"There can be no question he is in one of the cars. What objection--"
"There are people who sleep, women who--"
"But surely we can search--"
The woman opposite me hissed one swift sentence to Toutou, and rose,
crouching towards the door. Hugh's voice, tense and passionate,
thundered over the dispute:
"I don't give a damn for your rules! My friend is missing! I'm
going to look--"
A hand rattled the knob of the door. Hélène ripped off her waist,
dropped her skirt to the floor, and tumbled her hair over her
shoulders--all in two consecutive movements. As she unlocked the
door, she clutched her lingerie about her. Toutou reached up one
hand, and twitched off the single light; his other hand compressed my
neck and throat so that I could hardly breathe. Hélène, herself,
pushed open the door.
"Why the disturbance, messieurs?" she questioned silkily in French
with the Parisian tang. "In here we have illness. Is it necessary--"
One look was enough for them, I suppose. It would have fixed me, I
know. I heard Hugh's boyish gasp, and Nikka's apology.
"It was a mistake, madame. A friend is missing. We thought--"
"Here there are only ourselves," she assured them holding the door
wider.
Hugh cursed bluntly in Anglo-Saxon, and the guard joined his voice in
hectic phraseology. Hélène slowly reclosed the door.
"The light once more, Toutou," she whispered, and then she sank on
the seat and laughed as she had before like a schoolgirl on a lark.
Toutou's face was demoniac despite beard and glasses. Hélène saw the
purple flush on my cheeks, my straining nostrils.
"Beast!" she hissed. And she slapped him with her bare hand. He
cowered before her. She snatched the gag from my lap, and readjusted
it. "Go!" She pointed her finger toward the other end of the
compartment, and Toutou shambled away cat-fashion. "He will murder
you yet, Mr. Nash," she said cheerfully. "And I don't want you to
get it into your head that I am going to keep on saving you
indefinitely."
She rearranged her hair, picked up her waist and skirt, and put them
on as casually as though she was in her boudoir.
"This writing that you found," she resumed her questioning, "is it
definite? You may nod or shake your head."
I did neither.
"Very well," she answered patiently. "We will try you further."
And for two hours she shot questions at me, attacking the problem
from every conceivable angle, always with her eyes glued on my eyes,
always vigilant for any sign of acquiescence or denial. At last
Toutou barked an observation at her, and she leaned back a trifle
wearily.
"We approach Lyons," she said. "I shall let you go this time, Mr.
Nash, principally because if we killed you it might frighten your
friends away. Above everything, if we cannot learn the secret first,
we must get you to Constantinople."
Toutou took from one of their bags a length of stout rope, and tied
my legs from ankle to knee. The train was already whistling for the
station yards. Hélène donned hat and furs, and patted my shoulder.
"I wish you were with us, my friend. Ah, well, one wishes for the
moon. Be of a stout heart, and remember that Hélène de Cespedes has
saved you from the knife. I fancy we shall meet again, and as I
said, I cannot promise always to be so kind-hearted."
She let Toutou collect their two bags, saw him to the door and then
switched off the single light. They went out, the door closed, and I
was in darkness. I strained at my bonds, but without success.
Suddenly, the door was reopened. The head of Hélène de Cespedes
showed against the lights in the corridor.
"Here is the key to those wristlets," she whispered, sliding it along
the seat toward me. "Your friends can unlock them when they find
you. I don't believe in being too hard on an enemy--not when you
don't have to be. Well, so long, boy."
I chuckled to myself as the door clicked the second time. She was a
character, and no ordinary woman, judging by her prowess in curbing
Toutou's savage lusts. I was still reflecting on the amazing three
hours I had experienced in that railway compartment, when the brakes
took hold, and the train slowed to a stop between the
brightly-lighted platforms of the Lyons station. There was the
customary clatter of arriving and departing passengers. Footsteps
sounded in the corridor outside; a hand wrenched at the door; and a
guard bundled in, with two people behind him. As he turned on the
light his face was a study in consternation. The two people with him
bolted pell-mell into the corridor, shrieking in terror. The guard
stood fast, and stared at me, stroking his chin.
"_Sacré bleau!_" he muttered to himself. "Name of a Boche, the mad
Englishman was right! I believe they have murdered his friend!"
But then I wriggled to attract his attention to the fact that I was
alive, and the consternation on his face changed to cunning.
"But no," he reflected aloud. "It may be this is a criminal. Are
there, perhaps, gendarmes in company with it? It is for the _chef de
gare_--"
But at that moment Hugh, attracted by the rumpus the two startled
passengers were making in the corridor, forced his way into the
compartment, shoved the guard headlong on the floor and grabbed me by
the arm.
"Are you all right, old man?" he cried. "For God's sake, what have
they done with you?"
I motioned to the key on the seat, and he fitted it clumsily to the
handcuffs. Nikka and Watkins ran in about this time; the guard
regained his feet; the two passengers returned; some more people
tried to climb on their shoulders to see what was going on; somebody
else fetched the police.
To the latter I told a hasty cock-and-bull story. Bandits had
assailed me, searched me for valuables which luckily I did not
possess, and left me as I was found. I described Toutou and his
companion exactly as they had appeared, sardonically convinced that
they would be able to take care of themselves against any detectives
the French provinces could boast; and the police, impressed by Hugh's
title and our assertion that we had an important business engagement
in Marseilles, placed no obstacles in the way of our departure.
So the express steamed out of Lyons ten minutes late, and Hugh and
Nikka and Watkins escorted me back to our own compartment. And when
I reached there, and was safe from observation, I jangled the
handcuffs before their eyes and lay back and laughed until they
thought I was hysterical.
"It may have been funny for you," snapped Hugh. "It certainly wasn't
for us. We were just getting ready to unload at Lyons, convinced
that you had been thrown or fallen off the train."
"It's funny for all of us," I insisted, wiping the tears from my
eyes. "It's a joke--on us. Don't you see it, Hugh? You were
claiming that we had shaken them off, that we could sound the 'Stole
Away.' And then they ransacked our baggage and kidnapped me on a
crowded train. I tell you they are artists. There never was such a
gang. And as for Watty's pretty lady, she is the greatest society
villainness outside of the movies. Didn't you feel like a cur when
she stood there in the door pulling her poor little undies together,
with the hair tumbled in her eyes?"
"I'll say I did," answered Hugh with feeling. "That's score for them
again."
Nikka grinned at both of us.
"Don't be downhearted, you chaps. The law of averages works in these
affairs as in everything. And anyhow, I've got a plan."