“There! there! in there!”

Thus the fact of the murder became known to every one by personal inspection, for every one (even the lady had appeared for just a moment) had looked in where the body lay.  The compartment was filled for some ten minutes or more by an excited, gesticulating, polyglot mob of half a dozen, all talking at once in French, English, and Italian.

The first attempt to restore order was made by a tall man, middle-aged, but erect in his bearing, with bright eyes and alert manner, who took the porter aside, and said sharply in good French, but with a strong English accent: 

“Here! it’s your business to do something.  No one has any right to be in that compartment now.  There may be reasons—­traces—­things to remove; never mind what.  But get them all out.  Be sharp about it; and lock the door.  Remember you will be held responsible to justice.”

The porter shuddered, so did many of the passengers who had overheard the Englishman’s last words.

Justice!  It is not to be trifled with anywhere, least of all in France, where the uncomfortable superstition prevails that every one who can be reasonably suspected of a crime is held to be guilty of that crime until his innocence is clearly proved.

All those six passengers and the porter were now brought within the category of the accused.  They were all open to suspicion; they, and they alone, for the murdered man had been seen alive at Laroche, and the fell deed must have been done since then, while the train was in transit, that is to say, going at express speed, when no one could leave it except at peril of his life.

“Deuced awkward for us!” said the tall English general, Sir Charles Collingham by name, to his brother the parson, when he had reentered their compartment and shut the door.

“I can’t see it.  In what way?” asked the Reverend Silas Collingham, a typical English cleric, with a rubicund face and square-cut white whiskers, dressed in a suit of black serge, and wearing the professional white tie.

“Why, we shall be detained, of course; arrested, probably—­certainly detained.  Examined, cross-examined, bully-ragged—­I know something of the French police and their ways.”

“If they stop us, I shall write to the Times” cried his brother, by profession a man of peace, but with a choleric eye that told of an angry temperament.

“By all means, my dear Silas, when you get the chance.  That won’t be just yet, for I tell you we’re in a tight place, and may expect a good deal of worry.”  With that he took out his cigarette-case, and his match-box, lighted his cigarette, and calmly watched the smoke rising with all the coolness of an old campaigner accustomed to encounter and face the ups and downs of life.  “I only hope to goodness they’ll run straight on to Paris,” he added in a fervent tone, not unmixed with apprehension.  “No!  By jingo, we’re slackening speed—.”