The mystery of the Blue Train
taken in by Mother, but I think now that there is no need to do that.
You are frightfully sincere and upright and all those queer things, but
you are not a fool. Oh hell! what is it now?"
Lady Tamplin's voice was calling plaintively from the hall:
"Lenox, Derek has just rung up. He wants to come to dinner to-night.
Will it be all right? I mean, we haven't got anything awkward, like
quails, have we?"
Lenox reassured her and came back into Katherine's room. Her face
looked brighter and less sullen.
"I'm glad old Derek is coming," she said; "you'll like him."
"Who is Derek?"
"He is Lord Leconbury's son, married a rich American woman. Women are
simply potty about him."
"Why?"
"Oh, the usual reason--very good-looking and a regular bad lot. Every
one goes off their head about him."
"Do you?"
"Sometimes I do," said Lenox, "and sometimes I think I would like to
marry a nice curate and live in the country and grow things in frames."
She paused a minute, and then added, "An Irish curate would be best,
and then I should hunt."
After a minute or two she reverted to her former theme. "There is
something queer about Derek. All that family are a bit potty--mad
gamblers, you know. In the old days they used to gamble away their
wives and their estates, and did most reckless things just for the love
of it. Derek would have made a perfect highwayman--debonair and gay,
just the right manner." She moved to the door. "Well, come down when
you feel like it."
Left alone, Katherine gave herself up to thought. Just at present she
felt thoroughly ill at ease and jarred by her surroundings. The shock
of the discovery in the train and the reception of the news by her
new friends jarred upon her susceptibilities. She thought long and
earnestly about the murdered woman. She had been sorry for Ruth, but
she could not honestly say that she had liked her. She had divined only
too well the ruthless egoism that was the keynote of her personality,
and it repelled her.
She had been amused and a trifle hurt by the other's cool dismissal of
her when she had served her turn. That she had come to some decision,
Katherine was quite certain, but she wondered now what that decision
had been. Whatever it was, death had stepped in and made all decisions
meaningless. Strange that it should have been so, and that a brutal
crime should have been the ending of that fateful journey. But suddenly
Katherine remembered a small fact that she ought, perhaps, to have told
the police--a fact that had for the moment escaped her memory. Was it
of any real importance? She had certainly thought that she had seen a
man going into that particular compartment, but she realized that she
might easily have been mistaken. It might have been the compartment
next door, and certainly the man in question could be no train robber.
She recalled him very clearly as she had seen him on those two
previous occasions--once at the Savoy and once at Cook's office. No,
doubtless she had been mistaken. He had not gone into the dead woman's
compartment, and it was perhaps as well that she had said nothing to
the police. She might have done incalculable harm by doing so.
She went down to join the others on the terrace outside. Through the
branches of mimosa, she looked out over the blue of the Mediterranean,
and, whilst listening with half an ear to Lady Tamplin's chatter, she
was glad that she had come. This was better than St. Mary Mead.
That evening she put on the mauvy pink dress that went by the name of
_soupir d'automne_, and after smiling at her reflection in the mirror,
went downstairs with, for the first time in her life, a faint feeling
of shyness.
Most of Lady Tamplin's guests had arrived, and since noise was the
essential of Lady Tamplin's parties, the din was already terrific.
Chubby rushed up to Katherine, pressed a cocktail upon her, and took
her under his wing.
"Oh, here you are, Derek," cried Lady Tamplin, as the door opened to
admit the last comer. "Now at last we can have something to eat. I am
starving."
Katherine looked across the room. She was startled. So this--was Derek,
and she realized that she was not surprised. She had always known that
she would some day meet the man whom she had seen three times by such
a curious chain of coincidences. She thought, too, that he recognized
her. He paused abruptly in what he was saying to Lady Tamplin, and
went on again as though with an effort. They all went into dinner, and
Katherine found that he was placed beside her. He turned to her at once
with a vivid smile.
"I knew I was going to meet you soon," he remarked, "but I never dreamt
that it would be here. It had to be, you know. Once at the Savoy and
once at Cook's--never twice without three times. Don't say you can't
remember me or never noticed me. I insist upon your pretending that you
noticed me, anyway."
"Oh, I did," said Katherine; "but this is not the third time. It is the
fourth. I saw you on the Blue Train."
"On the Blue Train!" Something undefinable came over his manner; she
could not have said just what it was. It was as though he had received
a check, a setback. Then he said carelessly:
"What was the rumpus this morning? Somebody had died, hadn't they?"
"Yes," said Katherine slowly; "somebody had died."
"You shouldn't die on a train," remarked Derek flippantly. "I believe
it causes all sorts of legal and international complications, and it
gives the train an excuse for being even later than usual."
"Mr. Kettering?" A stout American lady, who was sitting opposite,
leaned forward and spoke to him with the deliberate intonation of her
race. "Mr. Kettering, I do believe you have forgotten me, and I thought
you such a perfectly lovely man."
Derek leaned forward, answering her, and Katherine sat almost dazed.
Kettering! That was the name, of course! She remembered it now--but
what a strange, ironical situation! Here was this man whom she had seen
go into his wife's compartment last night, who had left her alive and
well, and now he was sitting at dinner, quite unconscious of the fate
that had befallen her. Of that there was no doubt. He did not know.
A servant was leaning over Derek, handing him a note and murmuring in
his ear. With a word of excuse to Lady Tamplin, he broke it open, and
an expression of utter astonishment came over his face as he read; then
he looked at his hostess.
"This is most extraordinary. I say, Rosalie, I am afraid I will have to
leave you. The Prefect of Police wants to see me at once. I can't think
what about."
"Your sins have found you out," remarked Lenox.
"They must have," said Derek; "probably some idiotic nonsense, but I
suppose I shall have to push off to the Prefecture. How dare the old
boy rout me out from dinner? It ought to be something deadly serious to
justify that," and he laughed as he pushed back his chair and rose to
leave the room.
13. Van Aldin Gets a Telegram
On the afternoon of the 15th of February a thick yellow fog had settled
down on London. Rufus Van Aldin was in his suite at the Savoy and was
making the most of the atmospheric conditions by working double time.
Knighton was overjoyed. He had found it difficult of late to get his
employer to concentrate on the matters in hand. When he had ventured to
urge certain courses, Van Aldin had put him off with a curt word. But
now Van Aldin seemed to be throwing himself into work with redoubled
energy, and the secretary made the most of his opportunities. Always
tactful, he plied the spur so unobtrusively that Van Aldin never
suspected it.
Yet in the middle of this absorption in business matters, one
little fact lay at the back of Van Aldin's mind. A chance remark of
Knighton's, uttered by the secretary in all unconsciousness, had given
rise to it. It now festered unseen, gradually reaching further and
further forward into Van Aldin's consciousness, until at last, in spite
of himself, he had to yield to its insistence.
He listened to what Knighton was saying with his usual air of keen
attention, but in reality not one word of it penetrated his mind. He
nodded automatically, however, and the secretary turned to some other
papers. As he was sorting them out, his employer spoke:
"Do you mind telling me that over again, Knighton?"
For a moment Knighton was at a loss.
"You mean about this, sir?" He held up a closely written Company report.
"No, no," said Van Aldin; "what you told me about seeing Ruth's maid in
Paris last night. I can't make it out. You must have been mistaken."
"I can't have been mistaken, sir; I actually spoke to her."
"Well, tell me the whole thing again."
Knighton complied.
"I had fixed up the deal with Bartheimers," he explained, "and had gone
back to the Ritz to pick up my traps preparatory to having dinner and
catching the nine o'clock train from the Gare du Nord. At the reception
desk I saw a woman whom I was quite sure was Mrs. Kettering's maid. I
went up to her and asked if Mrs. Kettering was staying there."
"Yes, yes," said Van Aldin. "Of course. Naturally. And she told you
that Ruth had gone on to the Riviera and had sent her to the Ritz to
await further orders there?"
"Exactly that, sir."
"It is very odd," said Van Aldin. "Very odd, indeed, unless the woman
had been impertinent or something of that kind."
"In that case," objected Knighton, "surely Mrs. Kettering would have
paid her down a sum of money, and told her to go back to England. She
would hardly have sent her to the Ritz."
"No," muttered the millionaire; "that's true."
He was about to say something further, but checked himself. He was
fond of Knighton and liked and trusted him, but he could hardly discuss
his daughter's private affairs with his secretary. He had already felt
hurt by Ruth's lack of frankness, and this chance information which had
come to him did nothing to allay his misgivings.
Why had Ruth got rid of her maid in Paris? What possible object or
motive could she have had in so doing?
He reflected for a moment or two on the curious combination of chance.
How should it have occurred to Ruth, except as the wildest coincidence,
that the first person that the maid should run across in Paris should
be her father's secretary? Ah, but that was the way things happened.
That was the way things got found out.
He winced at the last phrase; it had arisen with complete naturalness
to his mind. Was there then "something to be found out"? He hated to
put this question to himself; he had no doubt of the answer. The answer
was--he was sure of it--Armand de la Roche.
It was bitter to Van Aldin that a daughter of his should be gulled
by such a man, yet he was forced to admit that she was in good
company--that other well-bred and intelligent women had succumbed just
as easily to the Count's fascination. Men saw through him, women did
not.
He sought now for a phrase that would allay any suspicion that his
secretary might have felt.
"Ruth is always changing her mind about things at a moment's notice,"
he remarked, and then he added in a would-be careless tone: "The maid
didn't give any--er--reason for this change of plan?"
Knighton was careful to make his voice as natural as possible as he
replied:
"She said, sir, that Mrs. Kettering had met a friend unexpectedly."
"Is that so?"
The secretary's practised ears caught the note of strain underlying the
seemingly casual tone.
"Oh, I see. Man or woman?"
"I think she said a man, sir."
Van Aldin nodded. His worst fears were being realized. He rose from
his chair, and began pacing up and down the room, a habit of his when
agitated. Unable to contain his feelings any longer, he burst forth:
"There is one thing no man can do, and that is to get a woman to