Edward tried to turn it on again. It didn’t seem to work. The coincidental timing was very curious until he peered under the table and noticed that the lamp had been unplugged.
How had they arranged that? Had some hand reached over from the table behind them while he was distracted and unplugged it?
“Do you get the idea somebody wants us to be in the dark?” Edward asked his dining companion.
“Very much so!” The detective nodded.
Edward jumped a little. He imagined hands reaching out and slipping inside his pockets in the semi-darkness.
The train plunged into an infamously long tunnel in the Alps Mountains. The light dimmed in the car since all outside sources were cut off. It was even darker around their table than it had been before.
Suddenly the power went out up and down the entire car. All the guests oohed and aahed. Ladies gasped. Waiters seemed to be scurrying up and down the aisles. Oddly enough no one lighted a match. They could at least allow candlelight to lend some sort of illumination to the darkened train car. Some giant hand had thrown a black velvet cloth over it.
He made sure that his formal jacket was properly and tightly buttoned up and that the inside pocket where the letters lay was sealed off from the outside world. People were brushing against their table left and right. He couldn’t tell who was supposed to be there and who wasn’t.
Edward heard the detective gasp and then go silent.
“George, are you there?” Edward asked.
No answer.
Edward rides the Orient Express fleeing from Venice taking letters stolen from the the new Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, to Winston Churchill in London. They detail Hitler’s plans to take over the government of Germany, starting in Bavaria, with a planned coup in 1923. Edward must thwart him before he becomes Fuhrer and becomes unstoppable. Above all Edward must prevent him from finding the Lawrence maps that are the key to world domination in a century gone insane. Read Map Plot.