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"This line we're traveling on now is one the spies use quite a bit. They used to go to London straight or else to Bordeaux and Paris; but the English and French got a pretty strict watch going, and now it's easier for them to slip into France through Italy, by Modane. They sail for Naples mostly, do you see?
Thus reflecting, I saw the train emerge from the tunnel, felt it jar to a standstill in the station of Modane, and, in obedience to staccato French outcries on the platform, alighted in the frontier town. Followed by Van Blarcom and preceded by our porters, I strolled in leisurely fashion towards the customs shed. The air was clear, chilly, invigorating; snowy peaks were thick and near.
It is no doubt very distressing to you. Yet, you know?" She bent her head slowly, but uttered no word. "Now this man, this poor man, had you noticed him at all? No no not afterwards, of course. It would not be likely. But during the journey. Did you speak to him, or he to you?" "No, no distinctly no." "Nor see him?" "Yes, I saw him, I believe, at Modane with the rest when we dined."
The masquerade was too preposterous to gain an instant's credence. It gave me, as the French say, furiously to think; it resolved all doubts. I felt inexplicably angry, then preternaturally cool and competent. For the first time since the Modane episode I was my clear-sighted self. I had been trying futilely to blindfold my eyes, to explain the inexplicable, to be unaware of the obvious.
But M. Jules Devaux had something startling to impart concerning the Countess. When asked if he had seen her or spoken to her, he shook his head. "No; she kept very much to herself," he said. "I saw her but little, hardly at all, except at Modane. She kept her own berth." "Where she received her own friends?" "Oh, beyond doubt. The Englishmen both visited her there, but not the Italian."
The cessation of this emigration has given her great reserves of man power, so that she has carried on her admirable campaign with less interference with her normal economic life than any other power. The first person I spoke to upon the platform at Modane was a British officer engaged in forwarding Italian potatoes to the British front in France.
From Modane to Paris Lovely scenery St. Michel St. Jean de Maurienne Epierre Paris Notre Dame French immorality La Manche "Dear old foggy London" Reflections and conclusion. After a thorough examination of our luggage by the French authorities, we leave Modane for Paris, a very powerful engine taking us in tow.
"Ah! exactly so. He dined at Modane. Was that the only occasion on which you saw him? You had never met him previously in Rome, where you resided?" "Whom do you mean? The murdered man?" "Who else?" "No, not that I am aware of. At least I did not recognize him as a friend." "I presume, if he was among your friends " "Pardon me, that he certainly was not," interrupted the Countess.
I am afraid that I am one of the very few women who do not like Paris. I never liked it, even in its palmy days; and now at this time I liked it less than ever. I was so glad to leave at the end of the week, and to move out of the raw, white fog sunwards. We had a most comfortable journey from Paris to Modane, and the officials at the Customs seemed to delight in irritating and insulting one.
For the American Red Cross uniform was not so familiar in those latitudes as it was to be a month later, when Major Murphy came swinging through Modane with forty-eight carloads of Red Cross supplies, a young army of Red Cross nurses and workers, and half a million dollars in ready cash to spend upon the stricken cities of Northern Italy choked with refugees fleeing before the German invasion!
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