I dashed across the tracks and almost into a young officer who was looking wildly around and calling in English for a porter. Seeing my O. D. uniform, he recognized a compatriot, and implored me to tell him, if I knew, which train he should take to go to Y——.
“Come along,” I flung back at him, for I was still racing for that moving train. “I’m going there, too.”
We just made it, flinging my suit-case and typewriter in, and falling in after them ourselves. The lieutenant had no luggage.
I was tired, having been up late the night before, and without any more conversation I curled up in a corner and went to sleep. I must have slept for an hour, and after I awoke the train rolled on for another hour without coming to Y——.
We were alone in the compartment, and no conductor appeared. So I spoke to the young officer. “I thought Y—— was only about an hour and a half from the junction,” I remarked.
“I thought so, too,” he answered. “But I don’t speak a word of French, so I don’t always get very precise information.”
“Well, the guard told me that this was the Paris express,” I said. “We must be on the right train.”
We commented on the singular lack of train conductors, and the lieutenant said yes, you could travel all over France free if you had luck. He had traveled for forty-eight hours for one franc and eighty centimes. At least, the only ticket he had been asked to surrender cost one franc eighty. The rest were in his pocket.
But he didn’t enjoy traveling alone in a foreign country. He couldn’t even ask for a match in French, much less inquire about trains. I resolved that I would be nice to that young man and see that he got safely to his destination. But when another hour went by and we still didn’t reach Y—— it occurred to me that I might not be very much of a guide. I opened my suit-case, got out a map of France, found the junction from which we had started and watched for the name on the next station.
We were on the Paris express all right, but we were going to Paris instead of away from it, as I had intended. We were within a mile or two from the city of Orleans. I broke the news to the lieutenant and he turned a little pale. He simply had to get to Y—— that night, he said. He was on a special mission and had been charged to deliver his message as quickly as possible.