"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.
As I gazed with alarmed eyes into the face of that strange, forbidding personality, the gaiety of my mood went out like a match in a breeze. The uncomfortable idea oppressed me that I was being surely caught and enveloped in a net of adverse circumstances, that I was the unconscious victim of a deep and terrible conspiracy which proceeded slowly forward to an inevitable catastrophe. On each of the previous occasions when this silent and malicious man had crossed my path I had had the same feeling, but in a less degree, and I had been able to shake it off almost at once. But now it overcame and conquered me.
The train thundered across Grosvenor Bridge through the murky weather on its way to the coast, and a hundred times I cursed it for its lack of speed. I would have given much to be at the journey's end, and away from this motionless and inscrutable companion. His eyes were constantly on my face, and do what I would I could not appear at ease. I tried to read the paper, I pretended to sleep, I hummed a tune, I even went so far as to whistle, but my efforts at sang-froid were ridiculous. The worst of it was that he was aware of my despicable condition; his changeless cynical smile made that fact obvious to me.