Dorothy Eden Read Online Free PDF Page A

least, Kate thought, those foolish clothes made her too conspicuous to get lost.
    But with her lumbering docility, that was like that of an elderly and faithful dog, it did not seem probable that such an emergency would arise.
    The man with his hat still pulled too low over his eyes changed trains at Milan, also. While Kate fussed about finding their compartment and getting Francesca safely on board he, however, had time to make a telephone call.
    Although, since it was a trunk call, it seemed at the last minute that it wouldn’t come through in time, and he was tensing and untensing his long, nervous fingers in impatience and anxiety when at last the clerk called to him.
    “Your Swiss call, signor.”
    Then it took some time to make himself understood. After all, it wasn’t an ordinary call inviting himself to stay overnight because he happened to be passing through Basle. It was something very different.
    But at last he thought all was well.
    He paid for the call and walked away slowly, reflecting on the split-second timing required, the crazy improbability of the whole thing.
    Then a thought came into his head and his eyes narrowed and grew grim. This had to succeed.
    Once more he had to run for the train. It very nearly left without him. Cursing the way Continental trains deliberately sneaked out of stations as if trying to leave passengers stranded, he sprinted after it and just hauled himself on board.
    Kate left Francesca for a few minutes to go and wash and try to revive herself. Her enthusiasm and expended energy had caught up on her, and now she was very tired. She hoped Francesca would sleep when she finally got her bedded down in the Paris train, because she herself was going to sleep like a log.
    Her face, pale with fatigue, looked back at her from the blurred mirror. Only a trickle of water came from the tap into the not-particularly-inviting basin. She would have to make do with a little coolness on her temples and a freshening of her lipstick. After all, did it matter, with only Francesca’s hooded eyes to look at her?
    Certainly she would have dinner in the restaurant car at Basle. But even then, all alone, with Francesca safely tucked in bed, travel stains could not matter less.
    Francesca was sitting bolt upright when she returned to the compartment.
    “Man,” she said succinctly.
    “A man?” Kate looked at the other unoccupied seats. They had been lucky so far, having a compartment to themselves. Not many people seemed to be travelling first-class on this train.
    “That’s all right,” she said. “Other people can sit in here if they wish to.”
    The child’s eyes looked burningly at her, and she spoke in her rapid, incomprehensible Italian.
    “Did he talk to you?” Kate said. The child did not seem frightened, only wide awake and interested. Someone apparently had had a conversation with her in her own language, and it had cheered her up. Perhaps this stranger would come back and talk in English, too. In the meantime the barrier of their different languages was between them again. Francesca, rocking her doll in her arms, had found someone she had liked. Perhaps, taking after her mother, she responded more to men than to women. At least it had made her find her tongue for she said something else, ending with “Londre.”
    “London?” said Kate sharply. “Did he ask if you were going to London?”
    “Londre,” said Francesca again, and held up two fingers.
    “Two,” said Kate, puzzled. “Twice?”
    But did she mean the stranger had been to London twice, or that Francesca herself had?
    Surely this rather comic-opera journey with the doll, the organdie dress and the Eiffel Tower looming ahead, as a lure, had not happened previously!
    At Basle there was slight pandemonium, for a party of schoolgirls from the ages of seven to twelve boarded the train, and there seemed to be confusion about their seats. There was a great deal of arguing and chattering going on, and the two mistresses in