"I beg your pardon," she began almost at once in English, when the waiter had brought her a plate of soup, and she was toying with the first spoonful, speaking in a low constrained, almost sullen voice, as though it cost her much to break through the convenances in thus addressing a stranger.
"You will think it strange of me," she went on, "but I am rather awkwardly situated, in fact in a position of difficulty, even of danger, and I venture to appeal to you as a countryman, an English officer."
"How do you know that?" I asked, quickly concluding that my light baggage had been subjected to scrutiny, and wondering what subterfuge she would adopt to explain it.
"It is easy to see that. Gentlemen of your cloth are as easily recognizable as if your names were printed on your back."
"And as they are generally upon our travelling belongings." I looked at her steadily with a light laugh, and a crimson flush came on her face. However hardened a character, she had preserved the faculty of blushing readily and deeply, the natural adjunct of a cream-like complexion.
"Let me introduce myself in full," I said, pitying her obvious confusion; and I handed her my card, which she took with a shamefaced air, rather foreign to her general demeanour.
"Lieut.-Colonel Basil Annesley, Mars and Neptune Club," she read aloud. "What was your regiment?"
"The Princess Ulrica Rifles, but I left it on promotion. I am unattached for the moment, and waiting for reëmployment."
"Your own master then?"
"Practically, until I am called upon to serve. I hope to get a staff appointment. Meanwhile I am loafing about Europe."
"Do you go beyond Lucerne?"
"Across the St. Gothard certainly, and as far as Como, perhaps beyond. And you? Am I right in supposing we are to be fellow travellers by the Engadine express?" I went on by way of saying something. "To Lucerne or further?"
CHAPTER II
"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