At the extreme opposite end of the car was a familiar face whose slate gray eyes were looking startled at Simon through the haze. Simon looked at the face. It belonged to Hans Klaus.
The Saint tried to shove his way through the lounge car before Klaus could lose himself somewhere up ahead, but it was a little like trying to run unhindered through the last three minutes of a football match. First the waiter blocked the aisle, and then an extraordinarily broad-backed man with a size-twenty neck and a determined aversion to being pushed around.
By the time Simon arrived at the next car, a sleeper whose compartments had no windows facing the corridor, Klaus was just disappearing at the other end. In the next car, Simon hurried by two men who apparently, until the rapid passage of Klaus, had been resting their elbows on the lowered windows, enjoying the night air. They watched the Saint as he came to the end of his pursuit. The door at the end of the car was locked, and a sign in three languages told him: PASSENGERS FORBIDDEN: TRAIN CREW ONLY.
The little toilette to the Saint’s left, which might have provided the last publicly available hiding place, was unlocked and empty. Simon looked back toward the two men who were observing him with sharp but controlled interest from their station halfway up the corridor. His main comfort at the moment was that if they were comrades of Klaus’s they’d have been at his neck before this. There was no sign, in fact, that Klaus meant anything to them at all. On their faces — the one broad and red, the other somewhat triangular and pallid — was none of the overt alarm or amusement which might have been normally aroused by the scene they had just witnessed.
They offered no hints or comments. They just watched as if to see whether the so far harmless and mysterious little drama in which the Saint was involved might enlarge to include them — in which case then: interest might become more active.
Their solemnity reminded Simon of the Secret Service men he had seen during appearances of American presidents — aloof, alert, and hair-triggered. He even thought he detected a bulge beneath the broad-faced one’s broad-lapeled unstylish jacket.
No lightning thought processes such as the Saint’s were necessary to draw the essential conclusions. He had on his first quick trip down the corridor decided that these wakeful gentlemen were a very probable tipoff to the whereabouts of the fabled Colonel Smolenko. Neither of them possessed the aura of cleverness which would expectedly emanate from the Colonel himself.
Simon sauntered back along the corridor. When he came abreast of the two sentinels, who made no pretense of not staring at him, he stooped all of a sudden and squinted out the window as if he had seen something startling.
That was sufficient to distract his travelling companions long enough for him to open the compartment door they were guarding, step inside, and instantly throw the bolt.
The Saint did not need to understand much Russian to disentangle the frightened word tovarishtch from the heavy pounding of fists on the door.
He turned to see his prize, and for once even Simon Templar was momentarily at a loss: Colonel Smolenko seemed to be a woman.
3
She looked at him coolly from her seat by the window: lovely Slavic cheekbones, fine lips devoid of make-up, and such large brown eyes that the fact she was pointing a pistol at Simon seemed entirely anticlimactic. If her dark hair had been less tightly pulled to the back of her head, and if she had worn something more fetching than a raincoat which probably had relatives among the nearest circus tents, she could have competed on all points with the distracting rabbits of the Berlin Bunny Club.
“Open the door,” she said in English, gesturing with her automatic.
“I’m here to help you,” said Simon. “Pardon me if I seem to gape, but I wasn’t expecting a woman.”
“Does it matter?”
“It could matter very much under certain circumstances.”
“Keep your hands away from your body and turn and open the door.”
Her English was strongly accented but clearly pronounced, and her determination that Simon should obey her more or less promptly or have his liver ventilated was just as clear.
He unlocked the door and immediately was in the ungentle hands of the Russian Secret Police.
“What you do here?” the big one asked, pinning the Saint’s arms behind him as the other despoiled his pockets of wallet, keys, and even small change.
Simon spoke to the beautiful Colonel.
“I’ve come to warn you that there’s a man aboard this train who very likely intends to see you dead before you reach Paris.”
“There are many men who intended to see me dead and ended up dead themselves,” she said with cold arrogance.
“I don’t doubt that in the least. My compliments.”
Smolenko put down her pistol and lay aside the book which had fallen to her lap when her compartment was invaded. She took the passport which the smaller guard offered her from the Saint’s jacket pocket.
“I think I do not need to look,” she said, with the most frosty trace of a smile. “Simon Templar.”
The Saint responded with a more friendly smile of his own. He bowed his head slightly.
“I’m flattered that news of my infamy has spread as far as the Kremlin.”
“I have a photographic memory, and in our central office we have constantly updated files which inform us of the movements of any persons of interest who are in the area where I am going.”
“It’s nice to be of interest, Colonel.”
The grip which the burly guard kept on Simon’s arms was beginning to become irritatingly uncomfortable. The Saint knew a swift motion which would not only break the hold but send the holder to the hospital for a month, but that did not seem the best strategy for maintaining this temporary thaw in the Cold War.
“Do you mind if I stand up by myself?” he asked mildly. “As you can see, I have no weapons.”
“Ivan,” the Colonel said to the big guard, and continued in Russian.
Simon was freed, and he rubbed circulation back into his muscles. Ivan stationed himself at the door while his smaller, triangular-faced colleague produced a pistol that somehow seemed much too big for him and kept it pointed at the Saint.
“You may not leave,” Smolenko said. “No one is to know who I am.”
“I have no desire to leave,” responded Simon with exaggerated gallantry. “Such congenial company? Such heavy artillery? Besides, now there are enough of us for a rubber or two of bridge.”
“Sit down,” Smolenko said. “Before you are killed, we must talk a little. Ivan, go order some tea.”
Ivan stared dubiously at his chief. Smolenko said something to him in Russian, and he shrugged and left the compartment. The other man took up the watch at the door. Simon was still standing.
“Now,” Smolenko said. “Sit down. Vis-à-vis.”
“I prefer tête-à-tête,” said Simon, “but you’re the hostess.”
He sat down opposite her, crossed his legs, and relaxed. The comely colonel kept her eyes fixed on his face but showed no particularly urgent interest in anything he might have to reveal.
“You could have Raskolnikov there put away his hatchet,” Simon said finally. “As I told you, I’m here for the sole purpose of saving your life.”
“His name is Igor, and I give the orders, and I have no need of anyone to save my life.”
“Apparently not, but don’t you ever consider taking well-intended advice?”
“From bourgeois agents? Hardly.”
Simon looked pained.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones...”
“I do not understand.”