The railway guide, which I took back to the compartment, showed the westbound Orient had already passed us on its run to the English Channel. The only train back to Vienna would leave Budapest at six the following morning and the frontier station shortly after ten.
The girl bit her lip. “Is there a place where I could spend the night at the border?” Her long fingers were twisting and untwisting a lace handkerchief in her lap.
“I’m afraid there isn’t,” I said. “Hegyshalom, the border town, is a pretty primitive place.” I added, “But they wouldn’t let you off the train, anyway. The whole area is a Russian military zone.”
I thought I saw something close to despair in her black eyes. It made me say, “I don’t think you ought to worry. I’ll be glad to escort you to your hotel. You can send a telegram to Vienna. You can telephone, I think, if it’s important enough.”
She stood up and went over to the window and looked out for a minute or two without speaking. Then she turned and left the compartment.
I figured I had troubles enough of my own without looking for more. I picked up one of the Budapest papers which carried a piece I wanted to read again on the Hungarian steel industry but I’d scarcely scanned the first paragraph when the girl came back. She slammed the door and drew the bolt, and when she sat beside me I saw that her face was white and drawn. She ran a distracted hand through her hair. She wiped the palms of her hands with her handkerchief. It was a little while before her breathing became normal. I pretended to be reading but I watched her out of the corner of my eye.
In a minute or two, she turned to me and said in a thin voice, “I don’t know what you must think. I guess you must think—”
There was a knock on the door, sharp and insistently repeated. I put down my paper and started to get up, but the girl grabbed my sleeve. There was terror in her big black eyes.
“Please,” she said, “please don’t open it. Please, you mustn’t. You’ll help me, won’t you? Tell me you’ll help me.”
“Of course I’ll help you,” I said. “But we can’t stay in here with the door bolted.”
“Something terrible will happen if you open that door. You mustn’t.”
I started getting fed up at that point. I could understand a girl being upset and overwrought because her husband or her lover had missed a train. But I couldn’t see why that was any reason to ignore knocking at the door.
“Nonsense,” I said. I got up and slid back the bolt. I saw the girl had moved out of her seat and was standing behind me. I opened the door.
“Beg pardon, sir. Will you have first or second sitting at dinner, sir? First sitting when the train clears the Hungarian frontier, second sitting an hour later, sir.”
When I had closed the door, I saw that the girl had buried her face in her hands. I sat beside her and said as evenly as I could, “What’s this all about? There’s no reason to be afraid of the dining-car steward. What were you saying when he knocked?”
She didn’t look up but she said, “I was saying I can’t imagine what you must think of me.”
I had begun to suspect she was a girl with too much imagination and too little control of herself but I didn’t say so. I said, “I think you’re letting yourself get hysterical over nothing. Lots of people travel alone. You’re perfectly safe in this train. You’ve got to take hold of yourself.”
The girl said, “It isn’t traveling alone. I’m not worried about that. I’ve traveled lots of times alone.”
I offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head. I said, “Then what is there to worry about? Come on, forget it. I’ve got tickets for the first sitting. I think I can talk the porter into getting us a cocktail if you’d like.”
She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. She said, “I’m sorry. I don’t see why I should expect you to understand.” She put her hand on my arm. “You see it’s just that I’m terribly afraid.”
I don’t imagine I sounded very sympathetic. “I can see that,” I said. “But you haven’t anything to be afraid of. Nobody will hurt you in Budapest. You must have been reading a lot of wild stories. I told you I’ll be glad to take you to your hotel. I’ll be glad to look after you until your friend arrives. If he doesn’t take the plane, he’ll certainly come on the morning train. I’m sure you’ll find a message from him when you get to the hotel in Budapest.”
“That’s very kind of you,” the girl said. “But it isn’t a friend who’s missing. It’s my employer. I’m his secretary.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then it’s your employer. I’ll be glad to look after you until your employer arrives.”
She shook her head. “He isn’t going to arrive in Budapest at all.”
“Why not? Is he afraid to travel alone, too?”
The girl raised her head and looked me straight in the eye.
“He isn’t coming to Budapest,” she said evenly. “He isn’t coming because he’s been murdered in Vienna.”
If she wasn’t a lunatic, she was dangerously close to it. I decided to leave her and go into the dining car for a drink.
“Oh, you can think I’m crazy but I know what I’m talking about. My employer was murdered all right. The man who killed him is right outside this door. He was in the corridor when I went out. I know he killed my employer. Now he’s following me.”
I opened the door. The corridor was empty.
I decided to give one last try. “You mustn’t get hysterical. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. Lots of people miss trains every day. That doesn’t mean they’ve been murdered.”
It was so much wasted breath.
“Oh, I do know what I’m saying,” the girl went on. There was a wild light in her deep, black eyes. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you? You think I’m good for the madhouse, don’t you? I don’t blame you. But my employer told me he’d be killed in Vienna. He told me that man outside would kill him.”
“But there’s no one outside,” I insisted.
The girl shook her head. “My employer told me that on the train. I saw that man following us. My employer pointed him out to me on the train from Geneva.”
I must have shown surprise at the word Geneva because Geneva was now supposed to be my home town. At least, that’s what it said in the passport I was carrying in my pocket. I must have shown surprise in my face, because the girl quickly picked it up.
“You aren’t from Geneva, are you?” She said it eagerly, as if in her highly excited state she wanted to find some link with the familiar.
I decided I might just as well start playing my role, the part I’d planned for my visit to Hungary. I was about to leave her to go into the dining car anyway.
I said yes I came from Geneva.
“Then maybe you knew my employer?” The deliberate use of the past tense sent the chills up and down my spine.
“Perhaps I did,” I said. If it would help to calm her there was no harm in pretending I’d heard of the man in a business way. I might even convince her I’d seen him alive in Vienna if that would quiet her nerves for the rest of the trip. I couldn’t expect to stay in the dining car the whole way to Budapest. I’d have to return to the compartment and to her at some point.
I added casually, “What was his name?” I had stood up, and my hand was on the door handle when she answered.
“Marcel Blaye,” she said. “B-L-A-Y-E. Oh, then you did know him?”
If you’ve ever experienced the sickening sensation of a sudden, unending drop in an abandoned elevator you’ll know how I felt. I’m sure my eyes started from my head. I felt drops of perspiration stand out on my forehead. I choked on my cigarette but I managed to stammer, “I’ve heard of Monsieur Blaye.” It seemed a long time before I recovered myself enough to sit down and turn my face to the window.