Without delay, the 1893 investigators leave London on Wednesday morning from Victoria station towards Dover, from where they board a steamboat across the channel to Calais. They then take the connecting train to Chalons-Sur-Maine, just after Paris, where they meet up with the main Orient Express late at night. The seven-coach-long train is the pinnacle of luxury, with its wooden sculpted interiors and impeccable service.
The team are placed in nearby compartments and spend the night settling in and keeping watch.
Day Two: Strasbourg to Budapest
Come breakfast time Thursday morning (Day 2), they are seated in the restaurant coach where they spot a man wearing a fez surprisingly similar to the Blood Red Fez they carry. He is seated with what appears to be his muscular, grumpy bodyguard. The man, whom they soon identify as Heironymous Menkaph, is busy imposing on a weeping young lady.
The investigators spy and stalk around in order to get a full picture of the situation, soon deducing the following:
- Menkaph is accompanied by his bodyguard and three more young Turkish followers.
- Menkaph seems quite at ease and content with himself, projecting superiority.
- The woman, Ellie Myers, is on honeymoon with her husband Scott. He has taken seriously ill since boarding the train in Paris, and has become reclusive and aggressive. He only seems to be pacified in the presence of Menkaph.
- Scott Myers accepted a fez as a gift from Menkaph soon after leaving Paris, and he has since refused to take it off.
- The investigators sleep in the same coach as the Myers couple, Menkaph and his bodyguard.
Approaching the ill Scott Myers initially proves difficult, as he refuses to let anyone except his wife and Menkaph to enter his compartment.
In the evening of the same day, Baron von Hofler, prof. Smith's ally, boards the train in Vienna. Together, the team devises a plan to spy on Menkaph's operation: during dinner time, when the sleeping compartment is mostly empty, the doctor and robber will try to break in to the Myers' and Menkaph's compartment.
The lock on the Myers compartment gives in easily, but the doctor is surprised to see that the compartment interior is covered in unnatural darkness. Trying to open the curtain, he is assaulted by a terrible creature of shadow that is guarding the room. The two investigators fight the creature and end up throwing a gas lamp into the compartment, covering it in flames. The creature is banished, and in the commotion the investigators drag Scott Myers into their compartment and discover a hidden package under his pillow.
The train makes an emergency stop to assess the burn damage (it's considerable but not structurally threatening) before deciding to head to Budapest for repairs. Locked up in their compartment, the team examine Scott Myers and see that his fez-wearing condition is critical, and he's about to die and become one of the fez-spawn. Instead of handing him to the local medical services and have him become undead inside a hospital ward, they decide to kill him on the spot with a heavy sedative and retrieve the fez before the medical workers reach him. As for the hidden package, it contains the Whispering Fez - undoubtedly, Menkaph chose to hide it in the Myers room and summon the Shadow Spawn there, in order to keep his compartment above suspicion.
As the Orient Express pulls into the Budapest station, the investigators hastily pack their belongings and get off the train, before they are tracked by the minions of Menkaph. They head to the nearest hotel to plan their next moves.