“Oh, but it is not; quite the contrary,” she cried with almost hysterical alacrity.  “I have nothing to tempt them.  And yet something dreadful might happen; I feel we are quite at their mercy.”

“I don’t.  I tell you frankly that I think you are grossly exaggerating the situation.  But if you feel like that, why not wait?  Wait over for another train, I mean?”

I am free to confess that, although my curiosity had been aroused, I would much rather have washed my hands of her, and left her and her belongings, especially the more compromising part, the mysterious treasure, behind at Calais.

“Is there another train soon?” she inquired nervously.

“Assuredly—­by Boulogne.  It connects with the train from Victoria 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.