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answer to Mrs. Deaves’ warning faded.
    “Amélie!” she repeated as if calling her maid. Then she caught up the trailing skirt of her wrapper, ran down the corridor. “But Amélie—she must have been in my stateroom. Perhaps this—this thief has harmed her! Ma pauvre Amélie!”
    So—then there had been someone in Victorine’s stateroom to answer that summons at the window. Had the fellow come to meet Amélie? In spite of the careful primness of her clothing the girl was strikingly beautiful. It could well be that she had caught the eye of someone of the train crew; perhaps she was not adverse to such attentions.
    Victorine tugged open the door of her stateroom with another loud call of the maid’s name:

    “Amélie!”
    Inside we could see the girl huddled down on the divan, her hands covering her face, her shoulders shaking. The small lace cap had slid from its anchorage on the coils of her hair and the hair itself straggled in elf-locks about her hidden face.
    Victorine gave a little cry and sat down beside her, her arms around the shivering maid.
    “Amélie— ma pauvre petite —what is it? What has happened?”
    The torrent of French which broke in answer to Victorine’s question was mainly unintelligible to me. It was plain in her fright the maid had reverted to a patois. But Victorine appeared to understand, uttered small murmurs of comfort, trying to soothe the overwrought girl. She looked up over Amélie’s shoulder at us.
    “This is indeed horrible. Ma pauvre Amélie has suffered such a fright. She looked to see what made a strange noise at the window and there was outside a face! A face of such horror that her senses nearly departed from her. She could not even cry out for help, so great was her fear!” Victorine shivered in sympathy. “Then the face—suddenly it was gone. She heard cries—a shot—it was terrible for her—
    “Come, ma petite .” Now she spoke more softly and a great deal more calmly to Amélie—it might have been that she had deliberately summoned emotion to make certain we understood the enormity of what happened. “You are altogether safe now—we are here. My brother, the men of the train, they shall make certain no more evil comes near you. And I have to thank you, Tamaris,” she said directly now to me, “that so quickly you found help. Had you not done this—who knows what might have happened?”
    Within moments, as Victorine continued to speak soothingly to the distraught girl, Mr. Sauvage returned. The intruder had vanished completely, the shot had been fired by him, but into the air as a warning.
    However, noticing the set of his chin as he told us that, I believed that he wished he had aimed at his elusive target. From now on, he assured us tersely, there would bea guard set. And it would not be long before our car was picked up by the westward-bound train.
    But when I returned to my stateroom I was unable to busy myself once more with my letter. Certain points of difference between the evidence of my own eyes and Amélie’s story arranged a pattern as I pulled them out of memory. In the first place that first noise certainly had not been made by an intruder striving to force a window. No, certainly it had been a tapping to attract attention—and there was the whistling also.
    Then when I had looked out and there had been that lifting of the curtain at Victorine’s pane there had been no face pressed against the glass there—the shadow had been well away from the side of the car.
    But these were small things, only enough to awaken suspicion, nothing to carry proof. I could not use them to impeach the maid’s story. Amélie was lying, I was sure. I must watch her—
    There was a sudden jar and then a jerk. We were once more ready to move on. Wearily I undressed and got into bed. There was a sense of relief at being free of the yard tracks and on the move. If Amélie had planned an amorous adventure it had failed and that was that.

CHAPTER THREE
    Morning