d.

"You are safe, my friend," he breathed the words towards the anxious one
in the corridor. "No one can get in. The door is locked. The door of the
dressing-room too. Sleep in your corner in peace."

The train sped over a moonlit country, spacious, unhurt by war. It moved
with a steady, rhythmical throb, like an accompaniment to a tune or a
phrase, ever repeated and repeated Hillyard found himself fitting words
to the pulsation of the wheels. "Berlin ... Berne ... Paris ... Cerbere
... Barcelona ... Madrid ... Aranjuez and the world"; and back again,
reversing the order: "Madrid ... Barcelona ... Cerbere ... Paris ...
Berne ... Berlin."

But the throb of the train set the interrogation at the end of the
string of names. So that the sequence of them was like a question
demanding confirmation....

Towards three in the morning, when there was no movement in the corridor
and the lights were blue and dim, Hillyard silently folded back his
bedclothes and rose. In the darkness he groped gently for the door of
the lavatory between his compartment and the compartment of the
manufacturer of Perpignan. He found the handle, and pressed it down
slowly; without a creak or a whine of the hinges the door swung open
towards him. Through the clatter he could hear that the manufacturer of
Perpignan was snoring. But Hillyard did not put his trust in snores. He
crept with bare feet across the washing-room, and, easing over the
handle of the further door, locked the manufacturer out. Again there had
been no sound. He shut the door of his own compartment lest the swing of
the train should set it banging and arouse the sleepers. Towards the
corridor there was a window of painted glass, and through this window a
pale, dim light filtered in. Hillyard noticed, for the first time, that
a small diamond-shaped piece of the coloured glass was missing, at about
the level of a man's head. It was advisable that Martin Hillyard should
be quick--or he might find the tables turned. With his ears more than
ever alert, he set up the steps for the upper berth, in the lavatory,
and whilst he worked his eyes watched that little aperture at the level
of a man's head, which once a diamond-shaped piece of coloured glass had
closed....

The door of the manufacturer was unlocked, the steps folded in their
place, and Hillyard back again in his bed before two minutes had passed.
And once more the throb of the train beat into a chain of towns which
went backwar