Читать книгу The Ostrekoff Jewels онлайн

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Inside the covered station, pandemonium seemed to have merged into bedlam. People were all jammed together, struggling even for breathing room. The train crawled along by the side of the platform until they were almost out of the station again. Then, with the same series of convulsive jerks, it came to a standstill. They gazed out of the window at the seething mob in consternation.

"Where do they come from, these crowds, and where are they going to?" the girl cried.

No one knew. They might have been exiles trying to get back to join in the political cataclysm. They might have been refugees arrived so far and anxious to continue their journey. Men and women, old and young, children and invalids, they were herded together under the low-hanging oil lamps, some of them talking fiercely, others in stolid, suffering silence.

"Say, look at the three musketeers!" Walter Pearson called out.

They gazed in astonishment at the three gigantic figures who towered head and shoulders above the mob which surged around them. They wore long, semi-military overcoats, Cossack turbans and high boots clotted thickly with snow and mud, as though they had recently arrived from a journey. All the time it seemed to Wilfred as though by slow but powerful pressure they were drawing nearer to the railway carriage.