Heart hammering, Max put the key in the lock, turned it, and opened the other half of Ester Rosenkrantz’s suitcase. It was stuffed full of jewels.

Rubies and sapphires and diamonds. Emeralds and opals. Jade and topaz and musgravite. Amber and onyx. They glittered under the train’s electric lights. They winked and shimmered. They were blindingly beautiful.

And that is why Max didn’t see Ester and Klaus standing in the doorway, until Ester began to bellow at the top of her appalling lungs.

10. Istanbul at Dawn

The bellowing brought the train guard, a man with a face as heavy and folded as a bulldog’s, who shook all his folds in outrage at Max. Max spoke neither Romanian nor Turkish, so she couldn’t explain that the jewels she appeared to be stealing were, in all likelihood, stolen goods already. Even if she could explain, she was not sure that this particular guard would take any notice. The head shaking was keeping him very busy, and he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Max tried to scrabble through the jewels and find the tiny heartbreak diamond, but that only resulted in a lot more yelling, and the guard pulling her off the case and down the corridor.

So that is how she ended up locked in the guard’s carriage, while the guard phoned somebody about her, glaring at her and wobbling his face about in disgust.

The guard’s carriage was dingy and uncomfortable, and it was hard being told off so unfairly, but as Max’s heart finally started to slow down it occurred to her that this might not be so bad. She was safe, here, from any pushing-off-train business. She had done it – she had found a secret stash of jewels, smuggled in a hidden compartment and guarded by a member of the shadowy Die Eiserne Hand, and if that didn’t turn out to hold the heartbreak diamond she would eat her own knitted bobble hat. They would have to find someone who could speak French eventually, and if she was being handed in as a thief, then she would meet exactly the right people to arrest Ester and Klaus and find Marguerite. When they looked in that case, which the guard had insisted on keeping safe in his room, then they would know that she was telling the truth. She just had to wait.

So her tired brain gave in for the day, and she settled into the hard chair that she had been given, leaned against the window, and shut her eyes.