The 8.55 train from the Gare du Nord, carrying many passengers for London, after being detained within a mile of Paris for over an hour owing to the murder of the engine-driver, made an attempt last night to proceed, with terrible results. Near Chantilly, whilst travelling at over fifty miles an hour, the switches were tampered with and the express dashed into a goods train laden with minerals. Very few particulars are yet to hand, but the express was completely wrecked and many lives have been lost.
Among the dead are the following:
One by one Peter read out the names. Then he stopped short. A little exclamation broke from Sogrange’s lips. The thirteenth name upon that list of dead was that of Bernadine, Count von Hern.
“Bernadine!” Peter faltered. “Bernadine is dead!”
“Killed by the strikers!” Sogrange echoed! “It is a just thing, this.”
The two men looked down at the paper and then up at one another. A strange silence seemed to have found its way into the room. The shadow of death lay between them. Peter touched his forehead and found it wet.
“It is a just thing, indeed,” he repeated, “but justice and death are alike terrible.”...
Late in the afternoon of the same day, a motor car, splashed with mud, drew up before the door of the house in Berkeley Square. Sogrange, who was standing talking to Peter before the library window, suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence. He stepped back into the room and gripped his friend’s shoulder.
“It is the Baroness!” he exclaimed, quickly. “What does she want here?”
“The Baroness who? Peter demanded.