This little-known British film was recommended to me by YouTube, and given that I am a fan of train films (The Lady Vanishes is a favourite, as are Murder on the Orient Express and North-West Frontier), I decided I had to watch.

The story starts off with a bang (actually, almost literally: there’s a fatal gunshot in the very first scene). In an unnamed embassy in Paris, a party is in progress, when one of the guests, a Captain Zurta (Albert Lieven) slips out of the ballroom, makes his way to one of the more secluded rooms in the embassy, and having broken into a safe there, purloins a diary. He is caught red-handed by a footman who enters just then.