"Just so," I replied, wondering whether I should endeavor to obtain
from Marie Deschamps information which would be useful to Rosa.
By the time that the star of the Diana had said goodbye to certain
male acquaintances, and had gone through a complicated dialogue with
her maid on the subject of dress-trunks, the clock pointed almost to
nine, and a porter rushed us--Marie and myself--into an empty
compartment of a composite coach near to the engine. The compartment
was first class, but it evidently belonged to an ancient order of
rolling stock, and the vivacious Marie criticized it with considerable
freedom. The wind howled, positively howled, in the station.
"I wish I wasn't going," said the lady. "I shall be horribly ill."
"You probably will," I said, to tease her, idly opening the Globe. "It
seems that the morning steamer from Calais wasn't able to make either
Dover or Folkestone, and has returned to Calais. Imagine the state of
mind of the passengers!"
"Ugh! Oh, Mr. Foster, what is that case by your side?"
"It is a jewel-case."
"What a big one!"
She did not conceal her desire to see the inside of it, but I felt
that I could not, even to satisfy her charming curiosity, expose the
interior of Rosa's jewel-case in a railway carriage, and so I edged
away from the topic with as much adroitness as I was capable of.
The pretty girl pouted, and asked me for the Globe, behind which she
buried herself. She kept murmuring aloud extracts from the Globe's
realistic description of the weather, and then she jumped up.
"I'm not going."
"Not going?"
"No. The weather's too awful. These newspaper accounts frighten me."
"But the Casino de Paris?"
"A fig for it! They must wait for me, that's all. I'll try again
to-morrow. Will you mind telling the guard to get my boxes out,
there's a dear Mr. Foster, and I'll endeavor to find that maid of
mine?"
The train was already five minutes late in starting; she delayed it
quite another five minutes, and enjoyed the process. And it was I who
meekly received the objurgations of porters and guard. My reward was a
smile, given with a full sense of its immense value.
"Good-by, Mr. Foster. Take care of your precious jewel-case."
I had carried the thing in my hand up and down the platform. I ran to
my carriage, and jumped in breathless as the train whistled.
"Pleasant journey!" the witch called out, waving her small hand to me.
I bowed to her from the window, laughing. She was a genial soul, and
the incident had not been without amusement.
After I had shut the carriage door, and glanced out of the window for
a moment in the approved way, I sank, faintly smiling at the episode,
into my corner, and then I observed with a start that the opposite
corner was occupied. Another traveller had got into the compartment
while I had been coursing about the platform on behalf of Marie, and
that traveller was the mysterious and sinister creature whom I had met
twice before--once in Oxford Street, and once again during the night
watch in the cathedral at Bruges. He must have made up his mind to
travel rather suddenly, for, in spite of the weather, he had neither
overcoat nor umbrella--merely the frock coat and silk hat of
Piccadilly. But there was no spot of rain on him, and no sign of
disarray.