All? No! Kinko has paid with his life for the safety of his fellow
passengers.
Amid the confusion my first care was to visit the luggage van, which
had remained uninjured. Evidently if Kinko had survived the explosion
he would have got back into his box and waited till I put myself in
communication with him.
Alas! The coffer is empty--empty as that of a company which has
suspended payment. Kinko has been the victim of his sacrifice.
And so there has been a hero among our traveling companions, and he was
not this Faruskiar, this abominable bandit hidden beneath the skin of a
manager, whose name I have so stupidly published over the four corners
of the globe! It was this Roumanian, this humble, this little, this
poor fellow, whose sweetheart will wait for him in vain, and whom she
will never again see! Well, I will do him justice! I will tell what he
has done. As to his secret, I shall be sorry if I keep it. If he
defrauded the Grand Transasiatic, it is thanks to that fraud that a
whole train has been saved. We were lost, we should have perished in
the most horrible of deaths if Kinko had not been there!
I went back on to the line, my heart heavy, my eyes full of tears.
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