“Cautious!” I laughed, facing the old doctor, “I’m young. You are old. You weren’t cautious when you were my age, were you?”
“No,” he answered. “I suppose not—I suppose not.”
The night-mail train from Boulogne arrives at the little station at Lauterbrunnen each evening about five o’clock. The next afternoon therefore Mrs. Audley, who had quite recovered from her accident on the previous day, accompanied me down into the valley by the cable railway. She was all excitement, for her husband, before his departure, had promised to return by that train, and had, indeed, booked his sleeping-berth by it.
At last the train came slowly in from Interlaken, where the change is made from the wagon-lit. A number of hurrying English visitors descended but Stanley Audley was not among them.
Bitter disappointment was written upon the girl’s face.
“He must have missed the train at Victoria,” she declared.
“Well,” I said, “There is not another through train until tomorrow—unless he travels by Paris and Bâle.”
The station master, however, informed us that the service from Paris would not arrive till early next morning, so that we were compelled to reascend to Mürren.
Audley’s failure to telegraph or write to his wife, struck me as uncommonly strange.
While we were in the narrow little compartment of the cable railway, I ventured to put several questions to her concerning him. But she would give only evasive replies.