“It must be Major Thorp,” suggested Mrs. Jelf.
I shook my head.
“It was not Major Thorp,” I replied; “it was a near relation of your own, Mrs. Jelf.”
“Then I am more puzzled than ever,” replied my hostess. “Pray tell me who it was.”
“It was no less a person than your cousin, Mr. John Dwerrihouse.”
Jonathan Jelf laid down his knife and fork. Mrs. Jelf looked at me in a strange, startled way, and said never a word.
“And he desired me to tell you, my dear madam, that you need not take the trouble to burn the hall down in his honour this time, but only to have the chimney of the blue room swept before his arrival.”
Before I had reached the end of my sentence I became aware of something ominous in the faces of the guests. I felt I had said something which I had better have left unsaid, and that for some unexplained reason my words had evoked a general consternation. I sat confounded, not daring to utter another syllable, and for at least two whole minutes there was dead silence round the table. Then Captain Prendergast came to the rescue.
“You have been abroad for some months, have you not, Mr. Langford?” he said, with the desperation of one who flings himself into the breach. “I heard you had been to Russia. Surely you have something to tell us of the state and temper of the country after the war?”
I was heartily grateful to the gallant Skirmisher for this diversion in my favour. I answered him, I fear, somewhat lamely; but he kept the conversation up, and presently one or two others joined in, and so the difficulty, whatever it might have been, was bridged over—bridged over, but not repaired. A something, an awkwardness, a visible constraint remained. The guests hitherto had been simply dull, but now they were evidently uncomfortable and embarrassed.
The dessert had scarcely been placed upon the table when the ladies left the room. I seized the opportunity to select a vacant chair next Captain Prendergast.
“In Heaven’s name,” I whispered, “what was the matter just now? What had I said?”
“You mentioned the name of John Dwerrihouse.”
“What of that? I had seen him not two hours before.”
“It is a most astounding circumstance that you should have seen him,” said Captain Prendergast. “Are you sure it was he?”
“As sure as of my own identity. We were talking all the way between London and Blackwater. But why does that surprise you?”
“Because,” replied Captain Prendergast, dropping his voice to the lowest whisper—“because John Dwerrihouse absconded three months ago with s seventy-five thousand pounds of the company’s money, and has never been heard of since.”
John Dwerrihouse had absconded three months ago—and I had seen him only a few hours back! John Dwerrihouse had embezzled seventy-five thousand pounds of the company’s money, yet told me that he carried that sum upon his person! Were ever facts so strangely incongruous, so difficult to reconcile? How should he have ventured again into the light of day? How dared he show himself along the line? Above all, what had he been doing throughout those mysterious three months of disappearance?
Perplexing questions these—questions which at once suggested themselves to the minds of all concerned, but which admitted of no easy solution. I could find no reply to them. Captain Prendergast had not even a suggestion to offer. Jonathan Jelf, who seized the first opportunity of drawing me aside and learning all that I had to tell, was more amazed and bewildered than either of us. He came to my room that night, when all the guests were gone, and we talked the thing over from every point of view; without, it must be confessed, arriving at any kind of conclusion.
“I do not ask you,” he said, “whether you can have mistaken your man. That is impossible.”
“As impossible as that I should mistake some stranger for yourself.”
“It is not a question of looks or voice, but of facts. That he should have alluded to the fire in the blue room is proof enough of John Dwerrihouse’s identity. How did he look?”
“Older, I thought; considerably older, paler, and more anxious.”
“He has had enough to make him look anxious, anyhow,” said my friend, gloomily, “be he innocent or guilty.”
“I am inclined to believe that he is innocent,” I replied. “He showed no embarrassment when I addressed him, and no uneasiness when the guard came round. His conversation was open to a fault. I might almost say that he talked too freely of the business which he had in hand.”
“That again is strange, for I know no one more reticent on such subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five thousand pounds in his pocket?”
“He did.”
“Humph! My wife has an idea about it, and she may be right—”
“What idea?”
“Well, she fancies—women are so clever, you know, at putting themselves inside people’s motives—she fancies that he was tempted, that he did actually take the money, and that he has been concealing himself these three months in some wild part of the country, struggling possibly with his conscience all the time, and daring neither to abscond with his booty nor to come back and restore it.”
“But now that he has come back?”
“That is the point. She conceives that he has probably thrown himself upon the company’s mercy, made restitution of the money, and, being forgiven, is permitted to carry the business through as if nothing whatever I had happened.”
“The last,” I replied, “is an impossible case. Mrs. Jelf thinks like a generous and delicate-minded woman, but not in the least like a board of railway directors. They would never carry forgiveness so far.”
“I fear not; and yet it is the only conjecture that bears a semblance of likelihood. However, we can run over to Clayborough tomorrow and see if anything is to be learned. By the way, Prendergast tells me you picked up his cigar-case.”
“I did so, and here it is.”
Jelf took the cigar-case, examined it by the light of the lamp, and said at once that it was beyond doubt Mr. Dwerrihouse’s property, and that he remembered to have seen him use it.
“Here, too, is his monogram on the side,” he added—“a big J transfixing a capital D. He used to carry the same on his note-paper.”
“It offers, at all events, a proof that I was not dreaming.”
“Ay, but it is time you were asleep and dreaming now. I am ashamed to have kept you up so long. Good night.”
“Good night, and remember that I am more than ready to go with you to Clayborough or Blackwater or London or anywhere, if I can be of the least service.”
“Thanks! I know you mean it, old friend, and it may be that I shall put you to the test. Once more, good night.”
So we parted for that night, and met again in the breakfast-room at half-past eight next morning. It was a hurried, silent, uncomfortable meal; none of us had slept well, and all were thinking of the same subject. Mrs. Jelf had evidently been crying, Jelf was impatient to be off, and both Captain Prendergast and myself felt ourselves to be in the painful position of outsiders who are involuntarily brought into a domestic trouble. Within twenty minutes after we had left the breakfast-table the dog-cart was brought round, and my friend and I were on the road to Clayborough.
“Tell you what it is, Langford,” he said, as we sped along between the wintry hedges, “I do not much fancy to bring up Dwerrihouse’s name at Clayborough. All the officials know that he is my wife’s relation, and the subject just now is hardly a pleasant one. If you don’t much mind, we will take the 11.10 to Blackwater. It’s an important station, and we shall stand a far better chance of picking up information there than at Clayborough.”
So we took the 11.10, which happened to be an express, and, arriving at Blackwater about a quarter before twelve, proceeded at once to prosecute our inquiry.
&nb
sp; We began by asking for the station-master, a big, blunt, businesslike person, who at once averred that he knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse perfectly well, and that there was no director on the line whom he had seen and spoken to so frequently. “He used to be down here two or three times a week about three months ago,” said he, “when the new line was first set afoot; but since then, you know, gentlemen—”
He paused significantly.
Jelf flushed scarlet.
“Yes, yes,” he said, hurriedly; “we know all about that. The point now to be ascertained is whether anything has been seen or heard of him lately.”
“Not to my knowledge,” replied the station-master.
“He is not known to have been down the line any time yesterday, for instance?”
The station-master shook his head.
“The East Anglian, sir,”said he,”is about the last place where he would dare to show himself. Why, there isn’t a station-master, there isn’t a guard, there isn’t a porter, who doesn’t know Mr. Dwerrihouse by sight as well as he knows his own face in the looking-glass, or who wouldn’t telegraph for the police as soon as he had set eyes on him at any point along the line. Bless you, sir! there’s been a standing order out against him ever since the 25th of September last.”
“And yet,” pursued my friend, “a gentleman who travelled down yesterday from London to Clayborough by the afternoon express testifies that he saw Mr. Dwerrihouse in the train, and that Mr. Dwerrihouse alighted at Blackwater station.”
“Quite impossible, sir,” replied the station-master, promptly.
“Why impossible?”
“Because there is no station along the line where he is so well known or where he would run so great a risk. It would be just running his head into the lion’s mouth; he would have been mad to come nigh Blackwater station; and if he had come he would have been arrested before he left the platform.”
“Can you tell me who took the Blackwater tickets of that train?”
“I can, sir. It was the guard, Benjamin Somers.”
“And where can I find him?”
“You can find him, sir, by staying here, if you please, till one o’clock. He will be coming through with the up express from Crampton, which stays at Blackwater for ten minutes.”
We waited for the up express, beguiling the time as best we could by strolling along the Blackwater road till we came almost to the outskirts of the town, from which the station was distant nearly a couple of miles. By one o’clock we were back again upon the platform and waiting for the train. It came punctually, and I at once recognized the ruddy-faced guard who had gone down with my train the evening before.
“The gentlemen want to ask you something about Mr. Dwerrihouse Somers,” said the station-master, by way of introduction.
The guard flashed a keen glance from my face to Jelf’s and back again to mine.
“Mr. John Dwerrihouse, the late director?” said he, interrogatively.
“The same,” replied my friend. “Should you know him if you saw him?”
“Anywhere, sir.”
“Do you know if he was in the 4.15 express yesterday afternoon?”
“He was not, sir.”
“How can you answer so positively?”
“Because I looked into every carriage and saw every face in that train, and I could take my oath that Mr. Dwerrihouse was not in it. This gentleman was,” he added, turning sharply upon me. “I don’t know that I ever saw him before in my life, but I remember his face perfectly. You nearly missed taking your seat in time at this station, sir, and you got out at Clayborough.”
“Quite true, guard,” I replied; “but do you not also remember the face of the gentleman who travelled down in the same carriage with me as far as here?”
“It was my impression, sir, that you travelled down alone,” said Somers, with a look of some surprise.
“By no means. I had a fellow-traveller as far as Blackwater, and it was in trying to restore him the cigar-case which he had dropped in the carriage that I so nearly let you go on without me.”
“I remember your saying something about a cigar-case, certainly,” replied the guard; “but—”
“You asked for my ticket just before we entered the station.”
“I did, sir.”
“Then you must have seen him. He sat in the corner next the very door to which you came.”
“No, indeed; I saw no one.”
I looked at Jelf I began to think the guard was in the ex-director’s confidence, and paid for his silence.
“If I had seen another traveller I should have asked for his ticket,” added Somers. “Did you see me ask for his ticket, sir?”
“I observed that you did not ask for it, but he explained that by saying—” I hesitated. I feared I might be telling too much, and so broke off abruptly.
The guard and the station-master exchanged glances. The former looked impatiently at his watch.
“I am obliged to go on in four minutes more, sir,” he said.
“One last question, then,” interposed Jelf, with a sort of desperation. “If this gentleman’s fellow-traveller had been Mr. John Dwerrihouse, and he had been sitting in the corner next the door by which you took the tickets, could you have failed to see and recognize him?”
“No, sir; it would have been quite impossible.”
“And you are certain you did not see him?”
“As I said before, sir, I could take my oath I did not see him. And if it wasn’t that I don’t like to contradict a gentleman, I would say I could also take my oath that this gentleman was quite alone in the carriage the whole way from London to Clayborough. Why, sir,” he added, dropping his voice so as to be inaudible to the station-master, who had been called away to speak to some person close by, “you expressly asked me to give you a compartment to yourself, and I did so. I locked you in, and you were so good as to give me something for myself.”
“Yes; but Mr. Dwerrihouse had a key of his own.”
“I never saw him, sir; I saw no one in that compartment but yourself. Beg pardon, sir; my time’s up.”
And with this the ruddy guard touched his cap and was gone. In another minute the heavy panting of the engine began afresh, and the train glided slowly out of the station.
We looked at each other for some moments in silence. I was the first to speak.
“Mr. Benjamin Somers knows more than he chooses to tell,” I said.
“Humph! do you think so?”
“It must be. He could not have come to the door without seeing him; it’s impossible.”
“There is one thing not impossible, my dear fellow.”
“What is that?”
“That you may have fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing.”
“Could I dream of a branch line that I had never heard of? Could I dream of a hundred and one business details that had no kind of interest for me? Could I dream of the seventy-five thousand pounds?”
“Perhaps you might have seen or heard some vague account of the affair while you were abroad. It might have made no impression upon you at the time, and might have come back to you in your dreams, recalled perhaps by the mere names of the stations on the line.”
“What about the fire in the chimney of the blue room—should I have heard of that during my journey?”
“Well, no; I admit there is a difficulty about that point.”
“And what about the cigar-case?”
“Ay, by jove! there is the cigar-case. That is a stubborn fact. Well, it’s a mysterious affair, and it will need a better detective than myself, I fancy, to clear it up. I suppose we may as well go home.”
A week had not gone by when I received a letter from the secretary of the East Anglian Railway Company, requesting the favour of
my attendance at a special board meeting not then many days distant. No reasons were alleged and no apologies offered for this demand upon my time, but they had heard, it was clear, of my inquiries anent the missing director, and had a mind to put me through some sort Of official examination upon the subject. Being still a guest at Dumbleton Hall, I had to go up to London for the purpose, and Jonathan Jelf accompanied me. I found the direction of the Great East Anglian line represented by a party of some twelve or fourteen gentlemen seated in solemn conclave round a huge green baize table, in a gloomy boardroom adjoining the London terminus.
Being courteously received by the chairman (who at once began by saying that certain statements of mine respecting Mr. John Dwerrihouse had come to the knowledge ofthe direction, and that they in consequence desired to confer with me on those points), we were placed at the table, and the inquiry proceeded in due form.
I was first asked if I knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse, how long I had been acquainted with him, and whether I could identify him at sight. I was then asked when I had seen him last. To which I replied, “On the 4th of this present month, December, 1856.” Then came the inquiry of where I had seen him on that fourth day of December; to which I replied that I met him in a first-class compartment of the 4.15 down express, that he got in just as the train was leaving the London terminus, and that he alighted at Blackwater station. The chairman then inquired whether I had held any communication with my fellow-traveller; whereupon I related, as nearly as I could remember it, the whole bulk and substance of Mr. John Dwerrihouse’s diffuse information respecting the new branch line.
To all this the board listened with profound attention, while the chairman presided and the secretary took notes. I then produced the cigar-case. It was passed from hand to hand, and recognized by all. There was not a man present who did not remember that plain cigar-case with its silver monogram, or to whom it seemed anything less than entirely corroborative of my evidence. When at length I had told all that I had to tell, the chairman whispered something to the secretary; the secretary touched a silver hand-bell, and the guard, Benjamin Somers, was ushered into the room. He was then examined as carefully as myself. He declared that he knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse perfectly well, that he could not be mistaken in him, that he remembered going down with the 4.15 express on the afternoon in question, that he remembered me, and that, there being one or two empty first-class compartments on that especial afternoon, he had, in compliance with my request, placed me in a carriage by myself. He was positive that I remained alone in that compartment all the way from London to Clayborough. He was ready to take his oath that Mr. Dwerrihouse was neither in that carriage with me, nor in any compartment of that train. He remembered distinctly to have examined my ticket at Blackwater; was certain that there was no one else at that time in the carriage; could not have failed to observe a second person, if there had been one; had that second person been Mr. John Dwerrihouse, should have quietly double-locked the door of the carriage and have at once given information to the Blackwater station-master. So clear, so decisive, so ready, was Somers with this testimony, that the board looked fairly puzzled.
The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK: 25 Classic Haunts! Page 3
