A woman, slowly bleeding to death from glass cuts in her leg, while the other three people in the compartment stared helplessly at her face going white. Blade pulled the woman's silk scarf off her head and used it as a tourniquet. «Now-one of you loosen that scarf every ten minutes once the bleeding stops. Understand?»

Vague nods. Blade knew the others were still in shock, but he had to hope for the best. He scrambled out and on upward.

Sometimes there were people who were beyond help-an old woman who lay with her head twisted at an impossible angle and no pulse at all in her bony wrist. As Blade searched for the pulse that wasn't there, a small boy tugged at the woman's other hand.

«Grandma, grandma, wake up! I'm scared!»

Blade had to get out of that compartment quickly.

In other compartments there were people who needed nothing but a little time to recover from the shock of the accident. One of them had the sense to hand Blade a large flask filled with brandy. He passed it around.

«Don't try climbing out unless you feel in the pink,» he said. «It would be bloody silly to fall down the corridor and break your necks now.» The remark drew nervous laughter. «Don't try moving any of the injured, either. We don't know how they're hurt.» They nodded and Blade moved on.

Pick glass out of wounds, wad handkerchiefs over gashes and cuts, apply tourniquets, use mouth-to-mouth respiration, give sips of brandy and words of encouragement-everything blended together in a single swirling chaotic nightmare until Blade no longer remembered details. He didn't care about that. What he did care about was keeping going until there were no more people in the car to look at. Then he would start on the next car, and then on the last, and then-

He'd just reached the rear of the car when the sound of approaching sirens and motorcycle engines reached his ears. A red flashing light glowed through the storm, then a yellow one.

Blade suddenly realized that he had to get out of here. He'd done what he saw as simple duty. But the police and the papers would still call him a hero. He would be standing in the full spotlight of publicity for days or even weeks.

Blade had a cover identity, of course. But could it defend him from all the questions the papers and the BBC would be asking? Even more important, could it defend every bit of the secret of Project Dimension X? Blade wondered.

Well, he'd done his duty in one way. Now he had to do it in another. He had lived in the shadows ever since he joined MI6. It was time to slip away into those shadows again.

Blade scrambled across to a window, kicked a few jagged pieces of glass out of the frame, and dropped to the ground. He landed heavily on hands and knees, but rose quickly to his feet. He was gone into the storm before the first motorcycle pulled up beside the wrecked train.

It was another hour before the chief constable for the county appeared. By that time the doctors had finished sorting the hundred-odd passengers into the dead, the hurt, and the unharmed. The three derailed cars and the smashed locomotive still sprawled hideously across the landscape. In the gloom and the falling sleet, the emergency lights made the cars look grotesquely twisted and bloated.

The chief constable's irritation at being dragged out of bed in such grisly weather vanished in a moment. He hadn't seen anything this bad since the Blitz!

«Good God! What happened?»

The police inspector in charge shook his head. «The Railway people think it may have been ice on the tracks, so that they hit this curve too fast. But that's only a guess.»

«How many-?»

«Twelve so far, and about forty hurt. We've also got a bit of a mystery on our hands.»

«Oh? How so?»

«It seems there was this chap who went clambering around one car like a ruddy monkey, giving first-aid to everyone. The doctors say he saved a good half-dozen lives. But he's nowhere around now.»

«Did you get a good description of him?»

«Oh, certainly, sir. Big fellow, over six feet, and heavily built. Dark hair and skin, but dressed like-well, like a gentleman. A good dozen people would probably be able to recognize him.»

The chief constable nodded, considering the mystery. Dash it all, he didn't want to track down a man who'd apparently been more than a bit of a hero, and who might have some perfectly good reason for disappearing after he'd done his work! But there was no doubt about it-the mystery man's behavior was suspicious, and part of the chief constable's job was to follow through on his suspicions.

«Well, I think we'd better get out a 'wanted for questioning' bulletin on this fellow. Also, ring up the Yard and see about having an artist sent out. With a dozen good witnesses we should be able to get a fair enough composite drawing of him.»

«Yes sir.»

Chapter 2

At about the same moment, Blade was on the telephone in a small pub about three miles away. He was talking to J. If the chief constable could have overheard Blade's end of the conversation, it might have set his mind at rest about Blade's being a criminal. It would still have left him wondering just exactly who Blade was.

«-no indication of anyone coming after me, at least not yet. I've told the pubkeeper that I had a bit of a car accident. Yes, he's heard of the train wreck. But the rumor going around is that everybody aboard was either killed or so badly hurt they won't be running around the countryside. He believes my story, at least so far.

«Fingerprints? Yes, of course. But I threw the brandy flask into a ditch. If they find it and recognize it, I doubt if it will show a recognizable print. No, not at all, sir. I appreciate your wanting to cover every point.

«Official car? By all means. Traffic on the line will be snarled for hours, and a car could be out here before I could find a bus or cab: The Red Bull, Ackerbury. Yes, it's the only Red Bull in town. About an hour and a half. Good. Thank you, sir, and see you Wednesday morning.»

Blade hung up. The pubkeeper was looking at him sympathetically. «Bit of a bother, the old bus giving out, wasn't it, guv'nor?» He hesitated. «Me brother Al runs a bit of a garage over t'west of town. I could give him a call and-«

Blade shook his head. «Thanks, old man, but Al can sleep in peace tonight. Nothing's going to help my car now, and I've already done what's necessary with the police. So if you'll just draw me another pint, I'll keep out of your way until my ride arrives.»

«Anything you say, guv'nor.» The beer tap hissed.

Thirty miles away, in a flat in the West End of London, the man called J also hung up his telephone. He leaned back in the leather armchair and lit up a cigar. That was one over the limit his doctor allowed him now, but damn the limit and damn the doctor! Compared to the risks Richard Blade took week in and week out, an extra cigar was nothing.

There was something grimly ludicrous about this new situation. Here was Richard, reacting superbly in a crisis, as he naturally would. In fact he had reacted so superbly that he had quite accidentally made himself a first-class hero. Never mind his modest account of the affair. From long experience J could usually guess what lay behind Richard's modest accounts. Probably a dozen people at least owed him life or limb.

Yet there was no bloody way Richard could ever get the credit he deserved! J almost shouted the words aloud in his frustration. Richard had done exactly the right thing in slipping away quietly. But it was a dammed shame that had to be the right thing to do!

Well, Richard was a professional and a gentleman. He would not cry over the inevitable. But one of these days, J swore, he would do something to see Richard get some part of the credit he deserved for all he had done for England. Someday, somehow, if it was the last thing he did.