As the Orient Express hurtles across Europe on its three-day journey from Ostend to Constantinople, the driven lives of several of its passengers become bound together in a fateful interlock. The menagerie of characters include Coral Musker, a beautiful chorus girl, Carleton Myatt, a rich Jewish businessman, Richard John, a mysterious and kind doctor returning to his native Belgrade, the spiteful journalist Mabel Warren, and Josef Grunlich, a cunning, murderous burglar.