It was proof positive that Miss Froy had sat recently in the corner seat. Iris vaguely remembered that she was knitting when she first entered the carriage. When she scrawled her name on the grimy glass with the point of one of her pins, she was working off some of the gush of her holiday mood.
"I was right, after all," thought Iris exultantly.
It was an overwhelming relief to emerge from the fog of her nightmare. But her exhilaration was blotted out almost immediately by a sense of impending crisis.
She was no longer fighting shadows-but facing actual danger.
A terrible fate awaited Miss Froy. She was the only person on the train who realised the peril. And time was slipping remorselessly away. A glance at her watch showed that it was ten minutes past nine. In less than an hour they would arrive at Trieste.
Trieste now assumed a terrible significance. It was the place of execution.
The train was rushing at tremendous speed, in a drive to make up lost time. It rattled and shrieked as it swung round the curves-shaking the carriages as though it recked nothing of its human load. Iris felt that they were in the grip of an insensate maddened force, which, itself, was a victim to a relentless system.
The driver would be fined for every minute over the scheduled time of arrival.
The sense of urgency made Iris spring up from her seat, only to stagger back again at a sudden wave of faintness. She felt a knocking inside her head and stabbing pains behind her eyeballs, as the result of her unguarded movement. With a vague hope that it might act as an opiate she lit a cigarette.
A babel of voices in the corridor told her that the passengers were returning from dinner. The family party, with the blonde, came first. They were all in excellent spirits after their meal and took no notice of Iris, who glowered at them from her corner. She resented their passive conspiracy, even though they were ignorant of any threat to Miss Froy, and were pleased only to be of some slight service to the baroness.
They were followed by the woman who wore Miss Froy's tweed suit and feathered hat. At the sight of the impostor, Iris' temperature rushed up again as she asked herself whether this were actually the second nursing-sister whom she had met in the corridor.
Both had dull black eyes, a sallow skin, and bad teeth; but the peasants in the railway waiting-room had looked much the same. As it was impossible to reach any conclusion, Iris rose and dashed out into the corridor.
She was strung up to action and intended to storm the next carriage. But blocking her way and almost filling the narrow space was the gigantic black figure of the baroness. As she towered above her, Iris realised that she was bottled up in the danger-zone of the train-away from every one she knew.
She felt suddenly helpless and afraid as she looked away from the grim face to the shrieking darkness rushing past the window. The maniac shrieks of the engine and the frantic shaking of the train increased her sense of nightmare. Once again her knees began to shake and she had a terrible fear that she was going to faint.
Her horror of becoming insensible and so being at their mercy made her fight the dizziness with every ounce of her strength. Licking her dry lips, she managed to speak to the baroness.
"Let me pass, please."
Instead of giving way, the baroness looked at her twitching face.
"You are in pain," she said. "That is not good, for you are young and you travel without friends. I will ask the nurse here for a tablet to relieve your head."
"No, thank you," said Iris firmly. "Please, will you stand on one side?"
The baroness took no notice of her request, or of her refusal. Instead, she shouted some imperative command which brought the callous-faced nurse to the doorway of the invalid's carriage. Iris noticed sub-consciously that the baroness' words did not conform to a conventional request, but were a peremptory order for prompt action.
The glass of the patient's window was also growing steamy from heat, but Iris tried to look inside. The still form laid out on the seat appeared to have no face-only a white blur.
As she asked herself what lay underneath the bandages, the nurse noticed her interest. She pounced forward and gripped the girl's arm, as though to pull her inside.
Iris looked up at the brutal mouth, the dark shading round the lips and the muscular fingers, which were covered with short black hairs.
"It is a man," she thought.
Terror urged her to an elemental action of self-defence. She was scarcely conscious of what she did as she pressed the end of her smouldering cigarette against the back of the woman's hand. Taken by surprise, she relaxed her grip with what sounded like an oath.
In that instant Iris pushed past the baroness and dashed down the corridor, fighting her way against the stream of returning diners. Although they opposed her advance, she was glad of their presence, because they formed a barrier between her and the baroness.
As her terror waned, she began to realise that every one in the train seemed to be laughing at her. The guard openly sneered as he twisted his little black spiked moustache. There was a white flash of teeth and hoots of smothered laughter. The passengers evidently considered her slightly mad and were amused by a funny spectacle.
Their derision made Iris aware of the situation. She felt self-conscious and ashamed as though she were in an unclothed kind of dream.
"Heavens, what have I done?" she asked herself. "That nurse only offered me some aspirin, or something. And I burned her wrist. If they're really on the level, they will think me mad."
Then her terror flared up again as the thought of Miss Froy.
"They won't listen to me. But I must make them understand about her. This train seems a mile long. I'll never get there. Faces. Grinning faces. Miss Froy. I must be in time.
She seemed imprisoned in some horrible nightmare, where her limbs were weighted with lead and refused to obey her will. The passengers blocked her way, so that she appeared to recede two steps where she advanced one. To her distorted imagination, the faces of these strangers were caricatures of humanity-blank, insensible and heartless. While Miss Froy was going to be murdered, no one cared for anything but dinner.
After an age-long struggle through several sections of the train-when the connecting-passages turned to clanking iron concertinas, which tried to catch her and press her to death-she reached the restaurant-car. As she heard the clink of china and the hum of voices, her brain-storm passed and she lingered in the entrance-her returning sense of convention at war with elemental fear and horror.
Soup was being served, and the diners were spooning it up vigorously, for they had been waiting a long time for their meal. In her lucid interval, Iris realised the hopeless prospect of trying to convince hungry men who had only just begun their dinner.
Once again she ran the gauntlet of faces as she reeled down the gangway. Two waiters, whispering to one another, tittered, and she felt sure that they were sneering at her.
The professor, who shared a table with Hare, saw her first, and an expression of apprehension flitted across his long face. He was chatting to the doctor, who had lingered over his coffee and liqueur, since the places for the second dinner were not all filled.
Iris felt chilled by her reception when they all stared at her in silence. Even Hare's eyes held no welcome, as he watched her with a worried frown.
In desperation she appealed to the professor.
"For heaven's sake go on with your soup. Don't stop-but please listen. This is of deadly importance. I know there is a Miss Froy. I know there's a conspiracy against her. And I know why."
The professor gave a resigned shrug as he continued drinking his soup. As Iris poured out her incoherent story, she was herself appalled by the weakness of her arguments. Before she finished she despaired of convincing him. He listened in stony silence, and was obviously absorbed by the exact proportion of salt to add to his soup.
At the end of the tale he raised his brows interrogatively as he glanced at the doctor, who broke into some rapid explanation. Watching their faces with anxious eyes, Iris could tell that Hare was disturbed by what was said, for he cut into the conversation.
"That's not her yarn. It's mine. I spun it for a lark, and the poor kid sucked it in. So, if any one's loopy, it's-"
He broke off, suddenly aware of what he had revealed. But Iris was too distraught to notice implications.
"Won't you come now?" she entreated the professor.
He looked at his empty plate which the waiter had placed in readiness for the fish course.
"Can't it wait until after dinner?" he asked wearily.
"Wait? Won't you understand. It's deadly, terribly urgent. When we reach Trieste it will be too late."
Again the professor mutely consulted the doctor, who stared fixedly at Iris as though he were trying to hypnotise her. When at last he spoke, it was in English for her benefit.
"Perhaps we had better come at once to see my patient. I'm sorry that your dinner should be spoiled, professor. But the young lady is in a very highly-strung condition. It may be-safer-to try and reassure her."
Wearing the expression of a martyr to his sense of justice, the professor unfolded himself from his seat. Once again the little procession staggered in single file down the corridors of the reeling train. As they neared the end, Hare turned and spoke to Iris in a fierce whisper.
"Don't be a blasted fool and start anything."
Her heart sank as she realised that his advice was too late.
The nursing-sister was already displaying her hand for the benefit of the doctor and the professor. Iris noticed vaguely that she had wound a handkerchief around her wrist as though she wished to conceal it from too close a scrutiny.
Then the doctor turned to her and spoke in soothing-syrupy accents.
"My dear young lady, wasn't it rather-impetuous-to burn my poor nurse? And all because she offered you a harmless tablet to relieve the pain of your head. See, professor, how her face twitches."
Iris shrank as he touched her forehead with a cold forefinger to illustrate his meaning.
Suddenly she remembered that when one is losing a defensive game, the only hope is to attack. Plucking up her courage, she managed to steady her voice.
"I cannot be sorry enough about the burn. It's no excuse to say I was hysterical. But there was some excuse for my being so. There is so much that I cannot understand."
The doctor accepted her challenge.
"Such as-?" he asked.
"Well, the professor tells me you offered to take me to a nursing home at Trieste."
"The offer is still open."
"Yet you are supposed to be rushing a patient to hospital for a dangerous operation. How could you possible bother yourself with a complete stranger? It makes one wonder exactly how serious her injuries are. Or if she has any at all."
The doctor stroked his beard.
"My offer was made merely to relieve the professor of an unwelcome responsibility, which is in my line and not in his. But I am afraid that you exaggerate your own importance. My intention was to give you a seat in the ambulance which took us to the hospital. After we had gone inside with our patient, the driver would follow his instructions and drive you to some recommended nursing home. It was not for professional service-but merely to give you a good night's rest, so that you could continue your journey on the following day."
The proposal sounded so reasonable that Iris could only fall back on her second question.
"Where is the other nurse?"
The doctor paused perceptibly before his reply.
"There is only one nurse."
As she looked at his impassive face, further screened by his black spade-beard, Iris knew instinctively that it was useless to protest. The result would be the same-denials on every side. No one but herself would have seen that second nurse. Just as no one would accept Miss Froy's signature as genuine-supposing that it had not been already destroyed by condensation.
The doctor spoke to the professor.
"I am sorry to detain you further," he said, "but here is a young lady who believes very terrible things. We must try to convince her of her delusions."
He crossed to the shrouded form of his patient and pulled up a corner of one of the rugs, displaying a neat pair of legs.
"Can you identify these stockings or these boots?" he asked.
Iris shook her head as she looked at the thick silk stockings and regulation brown calf single-strap shoes.
"You know I can't," she said. "But you might have better luck if you would raise just one bandage and let me see her face."
The doctor grimaced with horror.
"Ah," he said, "I see you do not understand. I must tell you something that is not pretty. Listen." He touched the swathed forehead with a butterfly flick of his fingertips. "There is no face here at all. No face. Only lumps of raw flesh. Perhaps we shall make quite another face, if we are lucky. We shall see."
His fingers moved on and hovered for a second over the bandage which covered the eyes of the figure.
"We await the oculist's verdict on these," he said. "Till then, we dare not expose them to a flicker of light. It may be total blindness, for one eye is but pulp. But science can work marvels."
He smiled at Iris and continued.
"But most terrible of all is the injury to the brain. I will not describe it, for already you look sick. First of all we must attend to that. Afterwards-the rest, if the patient still lives."
"I don't believe you," Iris told him. "It's all lies."
"In that case," said the doctor smoothly, "you can convince yourself. You have only to tear one little strip of plaster from the face, to see. But if you do, I warn you that bleeding will start again and the patient will die instantly from shock. You will be charged with murder and you will be hanged. But since you are so sure of the face which is under these bandages, you will not hesitate. Will you tear off this strip?"
Iris felt Hare's fingers closing over her arm, as she hesitated. Her instinct told her that the doctor was putting up a bluff, and that she ought to grasp at even the hundredth chance to save Miss Froy's life.
Yet the doctor had done his work too well. The thought of that mutilated face spouting fountains of blood made her shrink back. Afterwards? The rope-or Broadmoor for life. It was too horrible a prospect to contemplate.
"I-I can't," she whispered.
"Ah," sneered the doctor, "you talk, but you are not so brave."
For the first time it struck Iris that he had never intended to risk his patient. Had he done so, he would have committed professional suicide. Both he and the nurse were on guard, to anticipate her movements.
All the same, he had some ulterior object in view, for he seemed disappointed.
At the time Iris was too sick at heart over her own cowardice to question further. She realised that she had two enemies in the carriage.
The doctor-and herself.
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