Blood on the Tracks

by Martin Edwards

  ‘I was a fellow-traveller, on the steamship, with Sparrow MacCoy, and at least I had the satisfaction of spoiling his little game for the voyage. The very first night I went into the smoking-room, and found him at the head of a card-table, with half a dozen young fellows who were carrying their full purses and their empty skulls over to Europe. He was settling down for his harvest, and a rich one it would have been. But I soon changed all that.

  ‘“Gentleman,” said I, “are you aware whom you are playing with?”

  ‘“What’s that to you? You mind your own business!” said he, with an oath.

  ‘“Who is it, anyway?” asked one of the dudes.

  ‘“He’s Sparrow MacCoy, the most notorious card-sharper in the States.”

  ‘Up he jumped with a bottle in his hand, but he remembered that he was under the flag of the effete Old Country, where law and order run, and Tammany has no pull. Gaol and the gallows wait for violence and murder, and there’s no slipping out by the back door on board an ocean liner.

  ‘“Prove your words, you—!” said he.’

  ‘“I will!” said I. “If you will turn up your right shirt-sleeve to the shoulder, I will either prove my words or I will eat them.”

  ‘He turned white and said not a word. You see, I knew something of his ways, and I was aware that part of the mechanism which he and all such sharpers use consists of an elastic down the arm with a clip just above the wrist. It is by means of this clip that they withdraw from their hands the cards which they do not want, while they substitute other cards from another hiding-place. I reckoned on it being there, and it was. He cursed me, slunk out of the saloon, and was hardly seen again during the voyage. For once, at any rate, I got level with Mister Sparrow MacCoy.

  ‘But he soon had his revenge upon me, for when it came to influencing my brother he outweighed me every time. Edward had kept himself straight in London for the first few weeks, and had done some business with his American watches, until this villain came across his path once more. I did my best, but the best was little enough. The next thing I heard there had been a scandal at one of the Northumberland Avenue hotels: a traveller had been fleeced of a large sum by two confederate card-sharpers, and the matter was in the hands of Scotland Yard. The first I learned of it was in the evening paper, and I was at once certain that my brother and MacCoy were back at their old games. I hurried at once to Edward’s lodgings. They told me that he and a tall gentleman (whom I recognised as MacCoy) had gone off together, and that he had left the lodgings and taken his things with him. The landlady had heard them give several directions to the cabman, ending with Euston Station, and she had accidentally overheard the tall gentleman saying something about Manchester. She believed that that was their destination.

  ‘A glance at the time-table showed me that the most likely train was at five, though there was another at 4.35 which they might have caught. I had only time to get the later one, but found no sign of them either at the depot or in the train. They must have gone on by the earlier one, so I determined to follow them to Manchester and search for them in the hotels there. One last appeal to my brother by all that he owed to my mother might even now be the salvation of him. My nerves were overstrung, and I lit a cigar to steady them. At that moment, just as the train was moving off, the door of my compartment was flung open, and there were MacCoy and my brother on the platform.

  ‘They were both disguised, and with good reason, for they knew that the London police were after them. MacCoy had a great astrakhan collar drawn up, so that only his eyes and nose were showing. My brother was dressed like a woman, with a black veil half down his face, but of course it did not deceive me for an instant, nor would it have done so even if I had not known that he had often used such a dress before. I started up, and as I did so MacCoy recognised me. He said something, the conductor slammed the door, and they were shown into the next compartment. I tried to stop the train so as to follow them, but the wheels were already moving, and it was too late.

  ‘When we stopped at Willesden, I instantly changed my carriage. It appears that I was not seen to do so, which is not surprising, as the station was crowded with people. MacCoy, of course, was expecting me, and he had spent the time between Euston and Willesden in saying all he could to harden my brother’s heart and set him against me. That is what I fancy, for I had never found him so impossible to soften or to move. I tried this way and I tried that; I pictured his future in an English gaol; I described the sorrow of his mother when I came back with the news; I said everything to touch his heart, but all to no purpose. He sat there with a fixed sneer upon his handsome face, while every now and then Sparrow MacCoy would throw in a taunt at me, or some word of encouragement to hold my brother to his resolutions.

  ‘“Why don’t you run a Sunday-school?” he would say to me, and then, in the same breath: “He thinks you have no will of your own. He thinks you are just the baby brother and that he can lead you where he likes. He’s only just finding out that you are a man as well as he.”

  ‘It was those words of his which set me talking bitterly. We had left Willesden, you understand, for all this took some time. My temper got the better of me, and for the first time in my life I let my brother see the rough side of me. Perhaps it would have been better had I done so earlier and more often.

  ‘“A man!” said I. “Well, I’m glad to have your friend’s assurance of it, for no one would suspect it to see you like a boarding-school missy. I don’t suppose in all this country there is a more contemptible-looking creature than you are as you sit there with that Dolly pinafore upon you.” He coloured up at that, for he was a vain man, and he winced from ridicule.

  ‘“It’s only a dust-cloak,” said he, and he slipped it off. “One has to throw the coppers off one’s scent, and I had no other way to do it.” He took his toque off with the veil attached, and he put both it and the cloak into his brown bag. “Anyway, I don’t need to wear it until the conductor comes round,” said he.

  ‘“Nor then, either,” said I, and taking the bag I slung it with all my force out of the window. “Now,” said I, “you’ll never make a Mary Jane of yourself while I can help it. If nothing but that disguise stands between you and a gaol, then to gaol you shall go.”

  ‘That was the way to manage him. I felt my advantage at once. His supple nature was one which yielded to roughness far more readily than to entreaty. He flushed with shame, and his eyes filled with tears. But MacCoy saw my advantage also and was determined that I should not pursue it.

  ‘“He’s my pard, and you shall not bully him,” he cried.

  ‘“He’s my brother, and you shall not ruin him,” said I. “I believe a spell of prison is the very best way of keeping you apart, and you shall have it, or it will be no fault of mine.”

  ‘“Oh, you would squeal, would you?” he cried, and in an instant he whipped out his revolver. I sprang for his hand, but saw that I was too late and jumped aside. At the same instant he fired, and the bullet which would have struck me passed through the heart of my unfortunate brother.

  ‘He dropped without a groan upon the floor of the compartment, and MacCoy and I, equally horrified, knelt at each side of him, trying to bring back some signs of life. MacCoy still held the loaded revolver in his hand, but his anger against me and my resentment towards him had both for the moment been swallowed up in this sudden tragedy. It was he who first realised the situation. The train was for some reason going very slowly at the moment, and he saw his opportunity for escape. In an instant he had the door open, but I was as quick as he, and jumping upon him the two of us fell off the footboard and rolled in each other’s arms down a steep embankment. At the bottom I struck my head against a stone, and I remembered nothing more. When I came to myself I was lying among some low bushes, not far from the railroad track, and somebody was bathing my head with a wet handkerchief. It was Sparrow MacCoy.

  ‘“I guess I couldn’t lea
ve you,” said he. “I didn’t want to have the blood of two of you on my hands in one day. You loved your brother, I’ve no doubt; but you didn’t love him a cent more than I loved him, though you’ll say that I took a queer way to show it. Anyhow, it seems a mighty empty world now that he is gone, and I don’t care a continental whether you give me over to the hangman or not.”

  ‘He had turned his ankle in the fall, and there we sat, he with his useless foot, and I with my throbbing head, and we talked and talked until gradually my bitterness began to soften and to turn into something like sympathy. What was the use of revenging his death upon a man who was as much stricken by that death as I was? And then, as my wits gradually returned, I began to realise also that I could do nothing against MacCoy which would not recoil upon my mother and myself. How could we convict him without a full account of my brother’s career being made public—the very thing which of all others we wished to avoid? It was really as much our interest as his to cover the matter up, and from being an avenger of crime I found myself changed to a conspirator against Justice. The place in which we found ourselves was one of those pheasant preserves which are so common in the Old Country, and as we groped our way through it I found myself consulting the slayer of my brother as to how far it would be possible to hush it up.

  ‘I soon realised from what he said that unless there were some papers of which we knew nothing in my brother’s pockets, there was really no possible means by which the police could identify him or learn how he had got there. His ticket was in MacCoy’s pocket, and so was the ticket for some baggage which they had left at the depot. Like most Americans, he had found it cheaper and easier to buy an outfit in London than to bring one from New York, so that all his linen and clothes were new and unmarked. The bag, containing the dust-cloak, which I had thrown out of the window, may have fallen among some bramble patch where it is still concealed, or may have been carried off by some tramp, or may have come into the possession of the police, who kept the incident to themselves. Anyhow, I have seen nothing about it in the London papers. As to the watches, they were a selection from those which had been intrusted to him for business purposes. It may have been for the same business purposes that he was taking them to Manchester, but—well, it’s too late to enter into that.

  ‘I don’t blame the police for being at fault. I don’t see how it could have been otherwise. There was just one little clue that they might have followed up, but it was a small one. I mean that small, circular mirror which was found in my brother’s pocket. It isn’t a very common thing for a young man to carry about with him, is it? But a gambler might have told you what such a mirror may mean to a card-sharper. If you sit back a little from the table, and lay the mirror, face upwards, upon your lap, you can see, as you deal, every card that you give to your adversary. It is not hard to say whether you see a man or raise him when you know his cards as well as your own. It was as much a part of a sharper’s outfit as the elastic clip upon Sparrow MacCoy’s arm. Taking that, in connection with the recent frauds at the hotels, the police might have got hold of one end of the string.

  ‘I don’t think there is much more for me to explain. We got to a village called Amersham that night in the character of two gentlemen upon a walking tour, and afterwards we made our way quietly to London, whence MacCoy went on to Cairo, and I returned to New York. My mother died six months afterwards, and I am glad to say that to the day of her death she never knew what happened. She was always under the delusion that Edward was earning an honest living in London, and I never had the heart to tell her the truth. He never wrote; but, then, he never did write at any time, so that made no difference. His name was the last upon her lips.

  ‘There’s just one other thing that I have to ask you, sir, and I should take it as a kind return for all this explanation, if you could do it for me. You remember that Testament that was picked up. I always carried it in my inside pocket, and it must have come out in my fall. I value it very highly, for it was the family book with my birth and my brother’s marked by my father in the beginning of it. I wish you would apply at the proper place and have it sent to me. It can be of no possible value to anyone else. If you address it to X, Bassano’s Library, Broadway, New York, it is sure to come to hand.’

  The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel

  L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

  L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace might seem, at first sight, to be unlikely literary collaborators, but their writing partnership enjoyed considerable success between 1898 and 1903. The Meade name concealed the identity of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade-Smith (1844–1914), an exceptionally prolific author who was best-known for books for young readers, but wrote in a range of genres, including historical, romantic, and crime fiction. She collaborated with Dr Clifford Halifax (in reality a doctor called Edgar Beaumont), who provided her with scientific know-how before joining forces with another pseudonymous medical man, Eustace, who performed a similar role. Eustace’s real name was Eustace Robert Barton (1871–1943), and he later wrote with Edgar Jepson, most famously on a classic ‘impossible crime’ story, ‘The Tea Leaf’, and with Dorothy L. Sayers on The Documents in the Case (1930), her only detective novel in which Lord Peter Wimsey does not appear.

  Meade and Eustace created two female arch-villains, Madame Kalouchy and Madame Sara; the latter, an exotic character whose skills included plastic surgery, chemistry, and impersonation, appeared in half a dozen stories gathered in The Sorceress of the Strand (1902). This story comes from A Master of Mysteries (1898), sometimes said to be the first collection of ‘impossible crime’ tales. The book chronicles the cases of John Bell, a wealthy sceptic and ‘exposer of ghosts’ who uses his scientific knowledge to make sense of ‘queer events, enveloped at first in mystery, and apparently dark with portent, but, nevertheless, when grappled with in the true spirit of science, capable of explanation’.

  I was making experiments of some interest at South Kensington, and hoped that I had perfected a small but not unimportant discovery, when, on returning home one evening in late October in the year 1893, I found a visiting card on my table. On it were inscribed the words, ‘Mr Geoffrey Bainbridge.’ This name was quite unknown to me, so I rang the bell and inquired of my servant who the visitor had been. He described him as a gentleman who wished to see me on most urgent business, and said further that Mr Bainbridge intended to call again later in the evening. It was with both curiosity and vexation that I awaited the return of the stranger. Urgent business with me generally meant a hurried rush to one part of the country or the other. I did not want to leave London just then; and when at half-past nine Mr Geoffrey Bainbridge was ushered into my room, I received him with a certain coldness which he could not fail to perceive. He was a tall, well-dressed, elderly man. He immediately plunged into the object of his visit.

  ‘I hope you do not consider my unexpected presence an intrusion, Mr Bell,’ he said. ‘But I have heard of you from our mutual friends, the Greys of Uplands. You may remember once doing that family a great service.’

  ‘I remember perfectly well,’ I answered more cordially. ‘Pray tell me what you want; I shall listen with attention.’

  ‘I believe you are the one man in London who can help me,’ he continued. ‘I refer to a matter especially relating to your own particular study. I need hardly say that whatever you do will not be unrewarded.’

  ‘That is neither here nor there,’ I said; ‘but before you go any further, allow me to ask one question. Do you want me to leave London at present?’

  He raised his eyebrows in dismay.

  ‘I certainly do,’ he answered.

  ‘Very well; pray proceed with your story.’

  He looked at me with anxiety.

  ‘In the first place,’ he began, ‘I must tell you that I am chairman of the Lytton Vale Railway Company in Wales, and that it is on an important matter connected with our line that I have come to consult you. When I explain to you the nature
of the mystery, you will not wonder, I think, at my soliciting your aid.’

  ‘I will give you my closest attention,’ I answered; and then I added, impelled to say the latter words by a certain expression on his face, ‘if I can see my way to assisting you I shall be ready to do so.’

  ‘Pray accept my cordial thanks,’ he replied. ‘I have come up from my place at Felwyn today on purpose to consult you. It is in that neighbourhood that the affair has occurred. As it is essential that you should be in possession of the facts of the whole matter, I will go over things just as they happened.’

  I bent forward and listened attentively.

  ‘This day fortnight,’ continued Mr Bainbridge, ‘our quiet little village was horrified by the news that the signalman on duty at the mouth of the Felwyn Tunnel had been found dead under the most mysterious circumstances. The tunnel is at the end of a long cutting between Llanlys and Felwyn stations. It is about a mile long, and the signal-box is on the Felwyn side. The place is extremely lonely, being six miles from the village across the mountains. The name of the poor fellow who met his death in this mysterious fashion was David Pritchard. I have known him from a boy, and he was quite one of the steadiest and most trustworthy men on the line. On Tuesday evening he went on duty at six o’clock; on Wednesday morning the day-man who had come to relieve him was surprised not to find him in the box. It was just getting daylight, and the 6.30 local was coming down, so he pulled the signals and let her through. Then he went out, and, looking up the line towards the tunnel, saw Pritchard lying beside the line close to the mouth of the tunnel. Roberts, the day-man, ran up to him and found, to his horror, that he was quite dead. At first Roberts naturally supposed that he had been cut down by a train, as there was a wound at the back of the head; but he was not lying on the metals. Roberts ran back to the box and telegraphed through to Felwyn Station. The message was sent on to the village, and at half-past seven o’clock the police inspector came up to my house with the news. He and I, with the local doctor, went off at once to the tunnel. We found the dead man lying beside the metals a few yards away from the mouth of the tunnel, and the doctor immediately gave him a careful examination. There was a depressed fracture at the back of the skull, which must have caused his death; but how he came by it was not so clear. On examining the whole place most carefully, we saw, further, that there were marks on the rocks at the steep side of the embankment as if some one had tried to scramble up them. Why the poor fellow had attempted such a climb, God only knows. In doing so he must have slipped and fallen back on to the line, thus causing the fracture of the skull. In no case could he have gone up more than eight or ten feet, as the banks of the cutting run sheer up, almost perpendicularly, beyond that point for more than a hundred and fifty feet. There are some sharp boulders beside the line, and it was possible that he might have fallen on one of these and so sustained the injury. The affair must have occurred some time between 11.45 p.m. and 6 a.m., as the engine-driver of the express at 11.45 p.m. states that the line was signalled clear, and he also caught sight of Pritchard in his box as he passed.’