“Oh, Eirene, I am so sorry! Captain Wylie brought it me for a pillow, and I hadn’t an idea what it was. But when you mentioned brass ornaments, I remembered how uncomfortable the handle was. Now it’s all right, isn’t it?”
Eirene lay down, almost fainting, but gripping the box, while the bystanders dispersed, whispering and muttering, and much disappointed with this tame conclusion. Communication had now been established with the nearest station—a mere hill-hamlet, compared with which the village where the Roumi soldiers were to be quartered was a town—and presently a trolley came down the line with an official and several workmen. They brought the news that help had been telegraphed for from the larger station, but that it was not likely to amount to more than an engine and open trucks, which might not arrive that night. It was, therefore, for the passengers to choose whether they would remain where they were, or walk back to the small station in company with the men in charge of the trolley. The purpose which this was intended to serve was quickly evident, for several heavy cases were extracted with great difficulty from a locked van, which had been specially guarded since the accident, and piled upon it. The doctor obtained leave for Eirene and three other passengers, whose injuries were not so severe as to prevent their sitting up, to use the chests as seats, and they were lifted to their places as gently as possible, Eirene gripping the jewel-case fast in her uninjured hand. The passengers who chose to walk were asked to keep close to the trolley, so as to form a guard, headed by the two armed officials who were in charge of the treasure. Owing to the prohibition of the import of arms, Wylie had sent his regulation weapons by sea, and though both he and Maurice had brought sporting guns (which it had cost them much time and trouble to get through the customs), these could not yet be extricated from the confused heap of luggage in the train. Wylie had a miniature revolver, from which a long experience of danger had taught him never to separate himself, and he showed it reassuringly to Zoe as they set out, lighted in the gathering twilight by the fires kindled on the banks for the passengers who chose to remain by the train.
“Why, what is there to be afraid of?” she asked him. “Wolves?”
“Possibly; but I didn’t mean to frighten you, only to calm your fears if you had any.”
“Wylie doesn’t follow the bewildering changes of your mind,” said Maurice, who was carrying Zoe’s dressing-bag, the only thing they had been able to bring. “You professed to be afraid of the forest when you were perfectly safe in the train, but now you seem to think it rather a lark to be walking through it at this particularly ghostly hour.”
“Oh no, I know what you mean,” cried Zoe, “the people who destroyed the bridge! You do think it was done on purpose, then?”
“Dynamite, undoubtedly,” returned Wylie, “worked by one of those clockwork arrangements which are timed to go off at a certain moment. This one went off about forty seconds too soon. The guard actually saw the bridge blow up, and had just time to put the brakes on hard. If the train had been on the bridge, as the fiends who laid the dynamite intended, not a soul would have escaped.”
“I saw it too,” said Zoe, with a shudder. “And who do you think it was?”
“Why, the Thracian revolutionaries we heard of from the sergeant, of course,” said Maurice. “The troops had been carefully got out of the way by a false alarm, and the bridge was left defenceless. It was very neatly arranged. They were saying at the train that all these Thracian bands are under the orders of the Bishop of Tatarjé, who is a great pan-Slavist.”
“But what good would it have done them to destroy a whole train-load of people who had nothing to do with their troubles?” said Zoe. “Were they after the treasure?”