an impatient master of the house rapping for a servant.
Which is exactly what it was.
'I can manage this one, you take the other two. Let the redcaps handle the rest.' Dutifully Canfield instructed the porter, gathered up the two bags, and followed Elizabeth off the train.
Because he had to juggle the two suitcases in the small exit area, he was several feet behind Elizabeth as they stepped off the metal stairway and started down the concrete platform to the center of the station. Because of those two suitcases they were alive one minute later.
At first it was only a speck of dark movement in the corner of his eye. Then it was the gasps of several travelers behind him. Then the screams. And then he saw it.
Bearing down from the right was a massive freight dolly with a huge steel slab across the front used to scoop up heavy crates. The metal plate was about four feet off the ground and had the appearance of a giant, ugly blade.
Canfield jumped forward as the rushing monster came directly at them. He threw his right arm around her waist and pushed-pulled her out of the way of the mammoth steel plate. It crashed into the side of the train less than a foot from both their bodies.
Many in the crowd were hysterical. No one could be sure whether anyone had been injured or killed. Porters came running. The shouts and screams echoed throughout the platform.
Elizabeth, breathless, spoke into Canfield's ear. The suitcases! Do you have the suitcases?'
Canfield found to his amazement that he still held one in his left hand. It was pressed between Elizabeth's back and the train. He had dropped the suitcase in his right hand.
'I've got one. I let the other go.'
'Find it!'
'For Christ's sake!'
'Find it, you fool!'
Canfield pushed at the crowd gathering in front of them. He scanned his eyes downward and saw the leather case. It had been run over by the heavy front wheels of the dolly, crushed but still intact. He shouldered his way against a dozen midriffs and reached down. Simultaneously another arm, with a fat, uncommonly large hand thrust itself toward the crumpled piece of leather. The arm was clothed in a tweed jacket. A woman's jacket. Canfield pushed harder and touched the case with his fingers and began pulling it forward. Instinctively, amid the panorama of trousers and overcoats, he grabbed the wrist of the fat hand and looked up.
Bending down, eyes in blind fury, was a jowled face Canfield could never forget. It belonged in that hideous foyer of red and black four thousand miles away. It was Hannah, Janet's housekeeper!
Their eyes met in recognition. The woman's iron-gray head was covered tightly by a dark green Tyrolean fedora, which set off the bulges of facial flesh. Her immense body was crouched, ugly, ominous. With enormous strength she whipped her hand out of Canfield's grasp, pushing him as she did so, so that he fell back into the dolly and the bodies surrounding him. She disappeared rapidly into the crowd toward the station.
Canfield rose, clutching the crushed suitcase under his arm. He looked after her, but she could not be seen. He stood there for a moment, people pressing around him, bewildered.
He worked his way back to Elizabeth.
'Take me out of here. Quickly!'
They started down the platform, Elizabeth holding his left arm with more strength than Canfield thought she possessed. She was actually hurting him. They left the excited crowd behind them.
'It has begun.' She looked straight ahead as she spoke.
They reached the interior of the crowded dome. Canfield kept moving his head in every direction, trying to find an irregular break in the human pattern, trying to find a pair of eyes, a still shape, a waiting figure. A fat woman in a Tyrolean hat.
They reached the south entrance on Eisenbahn Platz and found a line of taxis.
Canfield held Elizabeth back from the first cab. She was alarmed. She wanted to keep moving.
'They'll send our luggage.'
He didn't reply. Instead he propelled her to the left toward the second car and then, to her mounting concern, signaled the driver of a third vehicle. He pulled the cab door shut and looked at the crushed, expensive Mark Cross suitcase. He pictured Hannah's wrathful, puffed face. If there was ever a female archangel of darkness, she was it. He gave the driver the name of their hotel.
'll n'y a plus de bagage, monsieur?'
'No. It will follow,' answered Elizabeth in English.
The old woman had just