The Passenger from Calais | Page 4

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 my tone to bring a flush upon
her impassive face, a fierce gleam of anger in her stolid eyes; and when
I added, "A fine sort of lady!" I thought she would have struck me. But
she did no more than hiss an insolent gibe.
"You call yourself an officer, a colonel? I call you a bounder, a
common cad."
"Be off!" I was goaded into crying, angrily. "Get away with you; I want
to have nothing more to say to you or your mistress. I know what you
are and what you have been doing, and I prefer to wash my hands of
you both. You're not the kind of people I like to deal