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Then I became sensible of a line of lackeys in livery fringing the edge of the platform, and at their head a most important-looking individual with a decoration on the lapel of his coat. He was surrounded by half a dozen young men, some in brilliant uniforms. They were greeting with great formality my fair companion of the night before! The two Acrobats, the German Calculator, and the English bareback-rider maid stood on one side.

My thought was that it was all an advertising trick of the Circus people, arranged for spectacular effect to help the night’s receipts.

While I looked on in wonder, the Manager of the Sleeping-Car Company joined me.

“I must thank you, sir,” he said, “for making known to me the outrage committed by one of our porters on the Princess. She is travelling incognito, and I did not know she was on the train until she told me last night who she was. We get the best men we can, but we are constantly having trouble of that kind with our porters. The trick is to give every passenger a whole compartment, and then keep packing them together unless they pay something handsome to be let alone. I shall make an example of that fellow. He is a new one and didn’t know me”–and he laughed.

“Do they call her the Princess?” I asked. They were certainly receiving her like one, I thought.

“Why, certainly, I thought you knew her,” and he looked at me curiously, “the Princess Dolgorouki Sliniski. Her husband, the Prince, is attached to the Emperor’s household. She is travelling with her two boys and their German tutor. The old gentleman with the white mustache now talking to her is the Russian Ambassador. And you only met her on the train? Old Azarian told me you knew her intimately.”

“Azarian!” I was groping round in the fog now.

“Yes–your room-mate. He is an Armenian and one of the richest bankers in Russia. He lends money to the Czar. His brother got on with you at Cologne. There they go together to look after their luggage–they have an agency here, although their main bank is in St. Petersburg. The brother had the compartment next to that woman, with the big dog. She is the wife of a rich brewer in Cologne, and just think–we must always give that brute a compartment when she travels. Is it not outrageous? It is against the rules, but the orders come from up above”–and he jerked his finger meaningly over his shoulder.

The fog was so thick now I could cut it with a knife.

“One moment, please,” I said, and I laid my hand on his elbow and looked him searchingly in the eye. I intended now to clear things up. “Was there a circus troupe on the train last night?”

“No.” The answer came quite simply, and I could see it was the truth.

“Nor one expected?”

“No. There was a circus, but it went through last week.”