Orient Express

Shortly after boarding the Orient Express at the beginning of its route in Ostende, Belgium, Coral Musker, who hopes to find work as a dancer at the end of the line in Constantinople, faints from starvation. She is taken to a first-class compartment by a bearded doctor. When the train stops at Köln, Germany, the doctor is recognized by reporter Mabel Warren as Dr. Richard Czinner, the Yugoslavian political leader who was sentenced to death five years earlier. Hoping to break what she thinks may be the biggest story of the year, namely, the doctor's return to Belgrade to lead the current uprisings, Mabel boards the train and confronts Czinner, who claims to be a British schoolmaster on holiday. Carlton Myatt, a date manufacturer to whose compartment Coral was taken, at first is insensitive to her condition, but after Czinner berates him for preferring to believe that there are no hungry people in the world, he takes Coral to lunch and arranges for her to keep his compartment. In the Vienna station, as Mabel, who has stolen an identifying letter from Czinner, places a call to her newspaper, a thief named Josef steals her purse, which contains the letter. Josef then runs into the window of a house where a half-dressed woman named Anna is waiting for her lover Anton, the conductor of the train, who earlier bragged that many women wait for him at the towns in which the train stops. Josef flirts with Anna, and while she waits for him in the bedroom, he attempts to open her safe. When Anton enters the room, Josef shoots him. Josef then buys a ticket to Constantinople, while Mabel is not able to board the train again, as her ticket is in the purse that Josef stole. When the train stops in Kelebia, Hungary, the passengers witness a wedding in the streets. The bride and groom then board the train, and the celebration continues there. Carlton, who has taken the compartment next to Coral, proposes to her and urges her to give up the job waiting for her. Josef, meanwhile, has begun an affair with Mabel's friend, Janet Pardoe, and they too celebrate their engagement. At the border of Yugoslavia, where martial law has been declared, Dr. Czinner leaves the train, but when he sees soldiers approach, he gives Coral a letter to mail if he is arrested. Both of them are then taken away by soldiers and put into a barracks room. Everyone on the train is searched thoroughly, and Josef is arrested for carrying a concealed gun. After the leaders of the government sentence Josef to one month in prison, Coral to twenty-four hours, and Czinner to execution in three hours, they are locked into the same room. Josef says that he can pick the lock and plans to escape with Czinner, while Czinner encourages Coral to remain. Meanwhile, Carlton leaves the train, despite the fact that Josef stole his wallet with his passport, to search for Coral. After Josef picks the lock, he forces Coral out, and she and the doctor run through the fog and crawl over a fence. Josef then tells the authorities that the two escaped, but that he refused to join them because he respects the law. The soldiers chase the two, but Carlton sees them, and they escape in a car he has hired. Josef is then shot by a firing squad. Czinner walks off to return to his people leaving Carlton and Coral to embrace, as their driver takes them away.