The mystery of the Blue Train
They were just finishing their lunch. Ruth gulped down her coffee, rose
from her seat, and quite oblivious of the fact that Katherine had not
begun to sip her coffee, said: "Come to my compartment with me."
They were two single compartments with a communicating door between
them. In the second of them a thin maid, whom Katherine had noticed at
Victoria, was sitting very upright on the seat, clutching a big scarlet
morocco case with the initials R. V. K. on it. Mrs. Kettering pulled
the communicating door to and sank down on the seat. Katherine sat down
beside her.
"I am in trouble and I don't know what to do. There is a man whom I
am fond of--very fond of indeed. We cared for each other when we were
young, and we were thrust apart most brutally and unjustly. Now we have
come together again."
"Yes?"
"I--I am going to meet him now. Oh! I dare say you think it is all
wrong, but you don't know the circumstances. My husband is impossible.
He has treated me disgracefully."
"Yes," said Katherine again.
"What I feel so badly about is this. I have deceived my father--it was
he who came to see me off at Victoria to-day. He wishes me to divorce
my husband, and, of course, he has no idea--that I am going to meet
this other man. He would think it extraordinarily foolish."
"Well, don't you think it is?"
"I--I suppose it is."
Ruth Kettering looked down at her hands; they were shaking violently.
"But I can't draw back now."
"Why not?"
"I--it is all arranged, and it would break his heart."
"Don't you believe it," said Katherine robustly; "hearts are pretty
tough."
"He will think I have no courage, no strength of purpose."
"It seems to me an awfully silly thing that you are going to do," said
Katherine. "I think you realize that yourself."
Ruth Kettering buried her face in her hands. "I don't know--I don't
know. Ever since I left Victoria I have had a horrible feeling of
something--something that is coming to me very soon--that I can't
escape."
She clutched convulsively at Katherine's hand.
"You must think I am mad talking to you like this, but I tell you I
know something horrible is going to happen."
"Don't think it," said Katherine; "try to pull yourself together. You
could send your father a wire from Paris, if you like, and he would
come to you at once."
The other brightened.
"Yes, I could do that. Dear old Dad. It is queer--but I never knew
until to-day how terribly fond of him I am." She sat up and dried her
eyes with a handkerchief. "I have been very foolish. Thank you so much
for letting me talk to you. I don't know why I got into such a queer,
hysterical state."
She got up. "I am quite all right now. I suppose, really, I just needed
some one to talk to. I can't think now why I have been making such an
absolute fool of myself."
Katherine got up too.
"I am so glad you feel better," she said, trying to make her voice
sound as conventional as possible. She was only too well aware that the
aftermath of confidences is embarrassment. She added tactfully:
"I must be going back to my own compartment."
She emerged into the corridor at the same time as the maid was also
coming out from the next door. The latter looked towards Katherine,
over her shoulder, and an expression of intense surprise showed itself
on her face. Katherine turned also, but by that time whoever it was
who had aroused the maid's interest had retreated into his or her
compartment, and the corridor was empty. Katherine walked down it to
regain her own place, which was in the next coach. As she passed the
end compartment the door opened and a woman's face looked out for a
moment and then pulled the door to sharply. It was a face not easily
forgotten, as Katherine was to know when she saw it again. A beautiful
face, oval and dark, very heavily made up in a bizarre fashion.
Katherine had a feeling that she had seen it before somewhere.
She regained her own compartment without other adventure and sat for
some time thinking of the confidence which had just been made to her.
She wondered idly who the woman in the mink coat might be, wondered
also how the end of her story would turn out.
"If I have stopped any one from making an idiot of themselves, I
suppose I have done good work," she thought to herself. "But who knows?
That is the kind of woman who is hard-headed and egotistical all her
life, and it might be good for her to do the other sort of thing for
a change. Oh, well--I don't suppose I shall ever see her again. She
certainly won't want to see _me_ again. That is the worst of letting
people tell you things. They never do."
She hoped that she would not be given the same place at dinner. She
reflected, not without humour, that it might be awkward for both of
them. Leaning back with her head against a cushion she felt tired
and vaguely depressed. They had reached Paris, and the slow journey
round the _ceinture_, with its interminable stops and waits, was very
wearisome. When they arrived at the Gare de Lyon she was glad to get
out and walk up and down the platform. The keen cold air was refreshing
after the steam-heated train. She observed with a smile that her
friend of the mink coat was solving the possible awkwardness of the
dinner problem in her own way. A dinner basket was being handed up and
received through the window by the maid.
When the train started once more, and dinner was announced by a violent
ringing of bells, Katherine went along to it much relieved in mind. Her
_vis-à-vis_ to-night was of an entirely different kind--a small man,
distinctly foreign in appearance, with a rigidly waxed moustache and
an egg-shaped head which he carried rather on one side. Katherine had
taken in a book to dinner with her. She found the little man's eyes
fixed upon it with a kind of twinkling amusement.
"I see, Madame, that you have a _roman policier_. You are fond of such
things?"
"They amuse me," Katherine admitted.
The little man nodded with the air of complete understanding.
"They have a good sale always, so I am told. Now why is that, eh,
Mademoiselle? I ask it of you as a student of human nature--why should
that be?"
Katherine felt more and more amused.
"Perhaps they give one the illusion of living an exciting life," she
suggested.
He nodded gravely.
"Yes; there is something in that."
"Of course, one knows that such things don't really happen," Katherine
was continuing, but he interrupted her sharply.
"Sometimes, Mademoiselle! Sometimes! I who speak to you--they have
happened to _me_."
She threw him a quick, interested glance.
"Some day, who knows, _you_ might be in the thick of things," he went
on. "It is all chance."
"I don't think it is likely," said Katherine. "Nothing of that kind
ever happens to me."
He leaned forward.
"Would you like it to?"
The question startled her, and she drew in her breath sharply.
"It is my fancy, perhaps," said the little man, as he dexterously
polished one of the forks, "but I think that you have a yearning in you
for interesting happenings. _Eh bien_, Mademoiselle, all through my
life I have observed one thing--'All one wants one gets!' Who knows?"
His face screwed itself up comically. "You may get more than you
bargain for."
"Is that a prophecy?" asked Katherine, smiling as she rose from the
table.
The little man shook his head.
"I never prophesy," he declared pompously. "It is true that I have the
habit of being always right--but I do not boast of it. Good-night,
Mademoiselle, and may you sleep well."
Katherine went back along the train amused and entertained by her
little neighbour. She passed the open door of her friend's compartment
and saw the conductor making up the bed. The lady in the mink coat
was standing looking out of the window. The second compartment, as
Katherine saw through the communicating door, was empty, with rugs and
bags heaped up on the seat. The maid was not there.
Katherine found her own bed prepared, and since she was tired, she went
to bed and switched off her light about half-past nine.
She woke with a sudden start; how much time had passed she did not
know. Glancing at her watch, she found that it had stopped. A feeling
of intense uneasiness pervaded her and grew stronger moment by moment.
At last she got up, threw her dressing-gown round her shoulders, and
stepped out into the corridor. The whole train seemed wrapped in
slumber. Katherine let down the window 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 recognized 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.
11. 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 day-time 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