The Mystery of the Blue Train

dressing-gown round her shoulders, and stepped out into the corridor. The whole train seemed wrapped in slumber. Katherine let the window down and sat by it for some minutes, drinking in the cool night air and trying vainly to calm her uneasy fears. She presently decided that she would go along to the end and ask the conductor for the right time so that she could set her watch. She found, however, that his little chair was vacant. She hesitated for a moment and then walked through into the next coach. She looked down the long, dim line of the corridor and saw, to her surprise, that a man was standing with his hand on the door of the compartment occupied by the lady in the mink coat. That is to say, she thought it was the compartment. Probably, however, she was mistaken. He stood there for a moment or two with his back to her, seeming uncertain and hesitating in his attitude. Then he slowly turned, and with an odd feeling of fatality, Katherine recognised him as the same man whom she had noticed twice before⁠—once in the corridor of the Savoy Hotel and once in Cook’s offices. Then he opened the door of the compartment and passed in, drawing it to behind him.

An idea flashed across Katherine’s mind. Could this be the man of whom the other woman had spoken⁠—the man she was journeying to meet.

Then Katherine told herself that she was romancing. In all probability she had mistaken the compartment.

She went back to her own carriage. Five minutes later the train slackened speed. There was the long plaintive hiss of the Westinghouse brake, and a few minutes later the train came to a stop at Lyons.

XI

Murder

Katherine wakened the next morning to brilliant sunshine. She went along to breakfast early, but met none of her acquaintances of the day before. When she returned to her compartment it had just been restored to its daytime appearance by the conductor, a dark man with a drooping moustache and melancholy face.

“Madame is fortunate,” he said; “the sun shines. It is always a great disappointment to passengers when they arrive on a grey morning.”

“I should have been disappointed, certainly,” said Katherine.

The man prepared to depart.

“We are rather late, Madame,” he said. “I will let you know just before we get to Nice.”

Katherine nodded. She sat by the window, entranced by the sunlit panorama. The palm trees, the deep blue of the sea, the bright yellow mimosa came with all the charm of novelty to the woman who for fourteen years had known only the drab winters of England.

When they arrived at Cannes, Katherine got out and walked up and down the platform. She was curious about the lady in the mink coat, and looked up at the windows of her compartment. The blinds were still drawn down⁠—the only ones to be so on the whole train. Katherine wondered a little, and when she re-entered the train she passed along the corridor and noticed that these two compartments were still shuttered and closed. The lady of the mink coat was clearly no early riser.

Presently the conductor came to her and told her that in a few minutes the train would arrive at Nice. Katherine handed him a tip; the man thanked her, but still lingered. There was something odd about him. Katherine, who had at first wondered whether the tip had not been big enough, was now convinced that something far more serious was amiss. His face was of a sickly pallor, he was shaking all over, and looked as if he had been frightened out of his life. He was eyeing her in a curious manner. Presently he said abruptly: “Madame will excuse me, but is she expecting friends to meet her at Nice?”

“Probably,” said Katherine. “Why?”

But the man merely shook his head and murmured something that Katherine could not catch and moved away, not reappearing until the train came to rest at the station, when he started handing her belongings down from the window.

Katherine stood for a moment or two on the platform rather at a loss, but a fair young man with an ingenuous face came up to her and said rather hesitatingly:

“Miss Grey, is it not?”

Katherine said that it was, and the young man beamed upon her seraphically and murmured: “I am Chubby, you know⁠—Lady Tamplin’s husband. I expect she mentioned me, but perhaps she forgot. Have you got your billet de bagages? I lost mine when I came out this year, and you would not believe the fuss they made about it. Regular French red tape!”

Katherine produced it, and was just about to move off beside him when a very gentle and insidious voice murmured in her ear:

“A little moment, Madame, if you please.”

Katherine turned to behold an individual who made up for insignificance of stature by a large quantity of gold lace and uniform. The individual explained. “There were certain formalities. Madame would perhaps be so kind as to accompany him. The regulations of the police⁠—” He threw up his arms. “Absurd, doubtless, but there it was.”

Mr. Chubby Evans listened with a very imperfect comprehension, his French being of a limited order.

“So like the French,” murmured Mr. Evans. He was one of those staunch patriotic Britons who, having made a portion of a foreign country their own, strongly resent the original inhabitants of it. “Always up to some silly dodge or other. They’ve never tackled people on the station before, though. This is something quite new. I suppose you’ll have to go.”

Katherine departed with her guide. Somewhat to her surprise, he led her towards a siding where a coach of the departed train had been shunted. He invited her to mount into this, and, preceding her down the corridor, held aside the door of one of the compartments. In it was a pompous-looking official personage, and with him a nondescript being who appeared to be a clerk. The