Wednesday, 4 January 1893, half past ten at night, into the small hours of Thursday the 5th
Aboard the Orient Express, running east between Chalon-sur-Marne and Stuttgart
Sleeping car one (the party’s cabins), the salon car at the rear, and the second sleeping car down the corridor
Gaslit, panelled in waxed hardwood, the furniture freestanding, the night sliding past the windows
Where we stood
The party are carrying The Blood Red Veil to Professor Demir in Constantinople. Three more mornings on the rails: Ulm, then Nis, then the city
Menkaph is on this same train. She left London on Monday, went to Paris, and boarded the Express there. The “Monday train” was the London-to-Paris leg; the party joined the same Express at Chalon on Wednesday
Bentley Burnham is aboard too, getting off at Stuttgart at 6am. He owes the party a report on what he tells Menkaph; Georgie still holds his papers
Amelia is travelling with a new third revolver, a heavy .577, bought for this trip, on top of her two pearl-handled pistols
Guarding the veil
Amelia took the veil off Worth and kept it in her own compartment, in its locked wooden case, and would not let it out of her sight
Picking it up, she heard it whisper again. This time it told her to shoot the Europeans in the face. She declined
Saroch stayed with her. The two of them sat up with the box between them like a bag of stolen money nobody dares leave the room
Worth had a headache and turned in early
The salon car
Georgie and Polat went aft to scout. The salon was busy for the hour:
Two men in armchairs, speaking Russian and upper-class French: The Russian Nobleman, an older man of rank, travelling with a young wife and a small entourage
Bentley Burnham, jumpy, mopping his face, working on a drink
A flamboyantly dressed woman in scarves and shawls, like a high-class fortune-teller, with a heavily veiled servant standing watch. This was Menkaph, in a wholly different aspect from the veiled Mrs. Leeds the party knew in London
Burnham murmured to Menkaph. She turned, smiled, and raised her glass to Polat. He lifted his coffee back and feigned ignorance. No use pretending now: she knows the party is aboard
Finding Menkaph’s room
When Menkaph and her servant left, Georgie tailed them through to the next car
Her compartment is one of the small, cheap rooms in the second sleeping car, not the larger berths.
She and the servant took separate rooms, not connected ones
Squeezing Burnham
Polat introduced himself to Burnham, then fetched Georgie’s papers across to Saroch, who did the talking. Burnham tried to keep something back and fumbled it badly (his Fast Talk came up 100). After that he was an open book, and frightened
What he gave up:
He had been told a Maria-Pook hired him, and to pose as a reporter for the Birmingham Daily Post if anyone caught him snooping
Menkaph has changed her aspect, from the proper veiled woman of London to this outre fortune-teller, and he could not say why
She is travelling as **spiritual adviser to The American Couple). The husband drinks heavily and is afraid of her; she has some hold over the wife
She likely went to Paris to collect the couple
She carried no book that he saw. “Not a reading type”
She does not travel alone: a veiled servant, a couple of bodyguards, and several more women
He is plainly terrified of her. “Some people kill you if you cross them. Some people kill your family”
Saroch and Polat read him as telling the truth, as far as his small knowledge went. Papers returned, Burnham downed his drink and went to sleep before Stuttgart
On the way out, Polat tried to glimpse what the Scottish woman was writing
The shadows
Near midnight, on watch in the darkened corridor, Georgie saw a thickening of shadow and heard a muffled scream from one of the compartments. He came out and knocked at Amelia’s door
Amelia opened it, revolver drawn. Down the corridor stood a thing: vaguely humanoid, mostly flat and two-dimensional, a distended maw, ragged wings, long misshapen limbs, and the face of a young woman none of them knew
It was kin to whatever rose out of Maria-Pook, but where that was solid flesh, this was shadow
Amelia fired her .577 straight down the corridor. The bullet passed clean through and shattered a window
The first shadow struck her, its mouth closing over her head, and she felt her life drawn out. A second shadow she had not seen came out of the dark and hit her again. She dropped to four of twelve hit points, screaming, no mark on her skin but the color gone from her face
Georgie worked out the trick: light. He cranked a corridor gas lamp to full and the flame seared the nearest shadow, burning part of it away. Worth woke and lit a second panel lamp; Roderick Barrington came out with his sabre and slashed (a clumsy stroke that missed the shadow and nearly took Amelia’s ear off, gouging the floor instead)
Seeing the things for what they were turned three skeptics into believers in one night. Georgie, Worth, and Barrington each took a point of sanity. Georgie’s verdict: that is why we are on this train
Henri Peters arrived asking what on earth was happening. Worth told him: intruders!
Aftermath
Amelia survived, badly. No visible wound, but she looks fevered and delirious, like someone a fortnight into a bad illness. She heals one hit point a day at best, and only with rest