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onto the platforms with frank new faces, intelligent, consid-
erate, thoughtless, thought-for. An occasional English face
among them seemed sharp and emergent. When there were
enough Americans on the platform the first impression of
their immaculacy and their money began to fade into a
vague racial dusk that hindered and blinded both them and
their observers.
Nicole seized Dick’s arm crying, ‘Look!’ Dick turned in
time to see what took place in half a minute. At a Pullman
entrance two cars off, a vivid scene detached itself from the
tenor of many farewells. The young woman with the helmet-
like hair to whom Nicole had spoken made an odd dodging
little run away from the man to whom she was talking and
plunged a frantic hand into her purse; then the sound of
two revolver shots cracked the narrow air of the platform.
Simultaneously the engine whistled sharply and the train
began to move, momentarily dwarfing the shots in signifi-
cance. Abe waved again from his window, oblivious to what
had happened. But before the crowd closed in, the others
had seen the shots take effect, seen the target sit down upon
the platform.
Only after a hundred years did the train stop; Nicole,
Mary, and Rosemary waited on the outskirts while Dick
fought his way through. It was five minutes before he found
them again—by this time the crowd had split into two sec-
tions, following, respectively, the man on a stretcher and the
girl walking pale and firm between distraught gendarmes.
‘It was Maria Wallis,’ Dick said hurriedly. ‘The man she
shot was an Englishman—they had an awful time finding

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