Free Journey Into Fear by Eric Ambler

to hear people talking about damp sheets and dirty wash basins and W.C.’s as if—the phrase was in his mind before he realised it—as if they were matters of life and death.
    Life and death! He got to his feet and found himself staring at the framed instructions for lifeboat drill.
    “CINTURE DI SALVATAGGIO, CEINTURES DE SAUVETAGE, RETRUNGSGÜRTEL . LIFEBELTS.…
In case of danger, the signal will be given by six short blasts on the whistle followed by one long blast and the ringing of alarm bells. Passengers should then put on their lifebelts and assemble at boat station number
4.”
    He had seen the same sort of thing dozens of times before but now he read it carefully. The paper it was printed on was yellow with age. The lifebelt on top of the washing cabinet looked as if it had not been moved for years. It was all ludicrously reassuring.
“In case of danger.
…” In case! But you couldn’t get away from danger! It was all about you, all the time. You could live in ignorance of it for years: you might go to the end of your days believing that some things couldn’t possibly happen to
you
, that death could only come to you with the sweet reason of disease or an “act of God”: but it was there just the same, waiting to make nonsense of all your comfortable ideas about your relations with time and chance, ready to remind you—in case you had forgotten—that civilisation was a word and that you still lived in the jungle.
    The ship swayed gently. There was a faint clanging from the engine room telegraph. The floor began to vibrate. Through the smeared glass of the porthole he saw a light begin to move. The vibration ceased for a moment or two; then the engines went astern and the water glass rattled in its bracket on the wall. Anotherpause and then the engines went ahead again, slowly and steadily. They were free of the land. With a sigh of relief he opened the cabin door and went up on deck.
    It was cold but the ship had turned and was taking the wind on her port side. She seemed stationary on the oily water of the harbour but the dock lights were sliding past them and receding. He drew the cold air into his lungs. It was good to be out of the cabin. His thoughts no longer seemed to worry him. Istanbul, Le Jockey Cabaret, the man in the crumpled suit, the Adler-Palace and its manager, Colonel Haki—they were all behind him. He could forget about them.
    He began to pace slowly along the deck. He would, he told himself, be able to laugh at the whole business soon. It was already half-forgotten; there was already an air of the fantastic about it. He might almost have dreamed it. He was back in the ordinary world: he was on his way home.
    He passed one of his fellow passengers, the first he had seen, an elderly man leaning on the rail staring at the lights of Istanbul coming into view as they cleared the mole. Now, as he reached the end of the deck and turned about, he saw that a woman in a fur coat had just come out of the saloon door and was walking towards him.
    The light on the deck was dim and she was within a few yards of him before he recognised her.
    It was Josette.

CHAPTER FOUR
    F OR A MOMENT they stared blankly at one another. Then she laughed. “Merciful God! It is the Englishman. Excuse me, but this is extraordinary.”
    “Yes, isn’t it.”
    “And what happened to your first-class compartment on the Orient Express?”
    He smiled. “Kopeikin thought that a little sea air would do me good.”
    “And you needed doing good?” The straw-coloured hair was covered with a woollen scarf tied under the chin, but she held her head back to look at him as if she were wearing a hat that shaded her eyes.
    “Evidently.” On the whole, he decided, she looked a good deal less attractive than she had looked in her dressing-room. The fur coat was shapeless, and the scarf did not suit her. “Since we are talking about trains,” he added, “what happened to your second-class compartment?”
    She frowned with a