“Don't leave me to face them.”
“I'm not.” He freed himself from her grasp. “If I've guessed right, you won't have to face them.” With that he was gone.
A quarter of an hour elapsed: he had not returned. Nothing that she dreaded had happened. With a lurch the train jerked forward. Farewells were being shouted. Station-lamps streamed past, the scarcer lights of freight-yards, then at last the glow-worm warmth of a city under darkness.
The door opened. She rose trembling, steadying herself against the wall. When she saw who it was, she sank back. “Tell me.”
“We were on the wrong track.” He spoke leisurely. “Captain Lajos wasn't lying. I followed him. He met his man with the telegram. He suspects us so little that he showed it to me. It read, 'No further developments.'”
“Thank God.” She pressed her handkerchief to her lips. And then, “Why should he have shown it to you? It was to put us off our guard.”
He sat down in the seat opposite. “I think not. He's changed his tactics. He's made up his mind to be friendly. It's you he's after, but in a different fashion. He thinks he's in love with you.”
“But he threatened——”
“No. It was our own guilty conscience. Here's how I figure it out. He probably has seen you before. He can't remember where. It may have been in the days when you were dancing. It was the vague recollection of you that piqued his curiosity and got him staring. When he found you alone and crying, he thought he'd stumbled on an adventure. My entering upset his calculations. I became for him the cruel husband; he hated me on the spot. My dear Santa, our meeting with him is the luckiest thing that could have happened.”
Dabbing her eyes, she tried to laugh. “I don't see it.”