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It was easy to understand, therefore, what incessant watchfulness was necessary, not a second passing without the entire staff of the station being called upon to exercise its vigilance. "In ten minutes, then?" repeated Father Fourcade. "Yes, in ten minutes, unless I'm obliged to close the line!" cried the station-master as he hastened into the telegraph office.
She was alone with her maid, and was looking out of the window at nothing in particular, and the station-master, who was watching the train go, chanced to meet her glance. Again there was the same smile and bow, quite mechanical, quite absent-minded, distinctly gracious. The station-master stared in astonishment after the receding carriage.
It was not a cheery room, and he was glad to be called back from a contemplation of a roll of texts hanging on the wall, and a bottle of stale water on the table, to human things by the entry of a drowsy official who was discharging the duties of station-master, booking-clerk, and porter all at once.
The station-master turned to the telegraph office in some astonishment. It was not the ordinary signal message, or the down signal would have dropped. He read off. "If a lady arrives by 10.20, too late for Marsland train, kindly help her make arrangements for night. Direct her to White Hart Inn, tell her will meet her Marsland first train. Reply. Helbeck, Bannisdale."
I contented myself with listening to the commonplace opinions which they exchanged on politics. I soon have enough of it; I stop my ears. I too, try to sleep; but that phrase which was spoken by the station-master of the last station, "You will not get to Paris, the rails are torn up at Mantes," returned in my dreams like an obstinate refrain. I open my eyes.
At length he stepped down, and, having carefully looked over the near-side footboard, announced that he had finished for the present. As we were returning down the line, we passed a working man, who seemed to be viewing the chairs and sleepers with more than casual interest. "That, I suppose, is one of the plate-layers?" Thorndyke suggested to the station-master.
Now that the train had puffed out of the station the station-master, a silver-haired old man with a red face on which amiability clung like a lather, had come to Marion's side and was saying that he had not seen her for a long time, and asking how Richard was and when he was coming back.
The station-master comes out and greets them effusively, and then runs back into the house to tell his wife that they have come, and she bustles out and also welcomes them effusively, and the four stand chatting about old times and friends and the state of the crops.
During the same night towards four o'clock the approaches of the Northern Railway Station were silently invested by two regiments; one of Chasseurs de Vincennes, the other of Gendarmerie Mobile. Numerous squads of sergents de ville installed themselves in the terminus. The station-master was ordered to prepare a special train and to have an engine ready.
"Suicide," gulped the startled station-master as soon as he could find strength to say anything; then he hastily slammed and relocked the door, set Webb on guard before it, and flew to notify the engine driver and to send word to the local police.
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