Parker Pyne Investigates - Agatha Christie [27]
Roberts caught his breath. Never had he imagined anything so lovely. She was wearing a long foamy garment of cream chiffon and lace. She leaned against the door into the corridor, panting. Roberts had often read of beautiful hunted creatures at bay. Now for the first time, he saw one–a thrilling sight.
‘Thank God!’ murmured the girl.
She was quite young, Roberts noted, and her loveliness was such that she seemed to him like a being from another world. Here was romance at last–and he was in it!
She spoke in a low, hurried voice. Her English was good but the inflection was wholly foreign. ‘I am so glad you have come,’ she said. ‘I have been horribly frightened. Vassilievitch is on the train. You understand what that means?’
Roberts did not understand in the least what it meant, but he nodded.
‘I thought I had given them the slip. I might have known better. What are we to do? Vassilievitch is in the next carriage to me. Whatever happens, he must not get the jewels.’
‘He’s not going to murder you and he’s not going to get the jewels,’ said Robert with determination.
‘Then what am I to do with them?’
Roberts looked past her to the door. ‘The door’s bolted,’ he said.
The girl laughed. ‘What are locked doors to Vassilievitch?’
Roberts felt more and more as though he were in the middle of one of his favourite novels. ‘There’s only one thing to be done. Give them to me.’
She looked at him doubtfully. ‘They are worth a quarter of a million.’
Roberts flushed. ‘You can trust me.’
The girl hesitated a moment longer, then: ‘Yes, I will trust you,’ she said. She made a swift movement. The next minute she was holding out to him a rolled-up pair of stockings–stockings of cobweb silk. ‘Take them, my friend,’ she said to the astonished Roberts.
He took them and at once he understood. Instead of being light as air, the stockings were unexpectedly heavy.
‘Take them to your compartment,’ she said. ‘You can give them to me in the morning–if–if I am still here.’
Roberts coughed. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘About you.’ He paused. ‘I–I must keep guard over you.’ Then he flushed in an agony of propriety. ‘Not in here, I mean. I’ll stay in there.’ He nodded towards the lavatory compartment.
‘If you like to stay here–’ She glanced at the upper unoccupied berth.
Roberts flushed to the roots of his hair. ‘No, no,’ he protested. ‘I shall be all right in there. If you need me, call out.’
‘Thank you, my friend,’ said the girl softly.
She slipped into the lower berth, drew up the covers and smiled at him gratefully. He retreated into the washroom.
Suddenly–it must have been a couple of hours later–he thought he heard something. He listened–nothing. Perhaps he had been mistaken. And yet it certainly seemed to him that he had heard a faint sound from the next carriage. Supposing–just supposing…
He opened the door softly. The compartment was as he had left it, with the tiny blue light in the ceiling. He stood there with his eyes straining through the dimness till they got accustomed to it. The girl was not there!
He switched the light full on. The compartment was empty. Suddenly he sniffed. Just a whiff but he recognized it–the sweet, sickly odour of chloroform!
He stepped from the compartment (unlocked now, he noted) out into the corridor and looked up and down it. Empty! His eyes fastened on the door next to the girl’s. She had said that Vassilievitch was in the next compartment. Gingerly Roberts tried the handle. The door was bolted on the inside.
What should he do? Demand admittance? But the man would refuse–and after all, the girl might not be there! And if she were, would she thank him for making a public business of the matter? He had gathered that secrecy was essential in the game they were playing.
A perturbed little man wandered slowly along the corridor. He paused at the end compartment. The door was open, and the conductor lay there sleeping. And above him, on a hook, hung his brown uniform coat and peaked cap.
V
In a flash Roberts