carriage he had just left, but it was
a temptation which he resisted. Instead, he leant out of the window, as
does a traveller who is nearing his destination.

Soon there floated up to him the shouting of "Dorgival! Cinq minutes
d'arret!" and when the train at last stopped, there arose the joyous
chatter which attends every arrival in a French station.

Vanderlyn waited for a few moments; then he stepped down from the
carriage, and began walking quietly down the platform. With intense
relief he remembered that the guard of the train whom he had feed so
well, and who must have noticed him with Peggy, had been left behind in
Paris.

Having passed the end compartment and guard's van he stood for awhile
staring down at the permanent way, counting the rails which gleamed in
the half darkness. He measured with his eyes the distance which
separated the platform on which he was standing from that whence the
next train back to Paris must start.

There was very little risk either of accident or detection, but it was
his duty to minimise whatever risk there was. He dropped down gently
onto the permanent way, and stood for a moment in the deep shadow cast
by the rear of the train he had just left; then, cautiously advancing,
he looked both up and down the line, and made his way to the other side.

The platform on which he now found himself was deserted, for the whole
life of the station was still centred round the train which had just
arrived; but as he started across the rails Vanderlyn became possessed
with a feeling of acute, almost intolerable, suspense. He longed with a
feverish longing to see the demi-rapide glide out into the darkness. He
told himself he had been a fool to suppose that anyone could enter the
darkened carriage where the dead woman lay without at once discovering
the truth,--and he began asking himself what he would do were the awful
discovery made, and were the fact that he had been her travelling
companion suddenly revealed or suspected.

But Laurence Vanderlyn was not subjected to so dread an ordeal; at last
there floated to where he was standing the welcome cry of "En voiture!
En voiture, s'il vous plait!" The dark serpentine mass on which the
lonely man's eyes were fixed shivered as though it were a sentient being
waking to life, and slowly the train began to move.

Vanderlyn started walking up the platform, and for awhile he kept in
step with the slowly gliding carriages; then they swept by more q