‘But what is to happen now?’ asked Bainbridge. ‘Will it go on for ever? How are we to stop it?’
‘The fissure ought to be drenched with lime water, and then filled up; but all really depends on what is the size of the supply and also the depth. It is an extremely heavy gas, and would lie at the bottom of a cutting like water. I think there is more here just now than is good for us,’ I added.
‘But how,’ continued Bainbridge, as we moved a few steps from the fatal spot, ‘do you account for the interval between the first death and the second?’
‘The escape must have been intermittent. If wind blew down the cutting, as probably was the case before this frost set in, it would keep the gas so diluted that its effects would not be noticed. There was enough down here this morning, before that train came through to poison an army. Indeed, if it had not been for Henderson’s promptitude, there would have been another inquest—on myself.’
I then related my own experience.
‘Well, this clears Wynne, without doubt,’ said Bainbridge; ‘but alas! For the two poor fellows who were victims. Bell, the Lytton Vale Railway Company owe you unlimited thanks; you have doubtless saved many lives, and also the Company, for the line must have been closed if you had not made your valuable discovery. But now come home with me to breakfast. We can discuss all those matters later on.’
How He Cut His Stick
Matthias McDonnell Bodkin
The apparent demise of Sherlock Holmes in ‘The Final Problem’ in 1893 prompted a host of writers to try to replace the great detective in the affections of the public with sleuths of their own. Among them was Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (1850–1933), an Irish lawyer and author, who proceeded to create a whole family of detectives. He began with Paul Beck, ‘the rule of thumb detective’, whose adventures were first collected in 1898. Two years later, Bodkin published Dora Myrl, Lady Detective, comprising a dozen stories. Eventually, Paul married Dora, and the union produced Paul Junior, who inherited their taste for detection, and appeared in Young Beck, a Chip Off the Old Block (1911).
The Spectator was impressed by Dora Myrl, describing her as ‘one of the most remarkable examples of new womanhood ever evolved in modern and ancient fiction’. The daughter of a professor, Dora studied medicine at Cambridge, drifting from job to job (as a telegraph girl, a telephone girl, and a journalist) before turning to crime-solving while acting as companion to an elderly woman who falls victim to a blackmailer. Dora’s intelligence and flair for disguising herself make her an effective detective when she sets up her own agency. In this story, her ability as a cyclist also comes in handy.
He breathed freely at last as he lifted the small black Gladstone bag of stout calfskin, and set it carefully on the seat of the empty railway carriage close beside him.
He lifted the bag with a manifest effort. Yet he was a big powerfully built young fellow; handsome too in a way; with straw-coloured hair and moustache and a round face, placid, honest-looking but not too clever. His light blue eyes had an anxious, worried look. No wonder, poor chap! He was weighted with a heavy responsibility. That unobtrusive black bag held £5,000 in gold and notes which he—a junior clerk in the famous banking house of Gower and Grant—was taking from the head office in London to a branch two hundred miles down the line.
The older and more experienced clerk whose ordinary duty it was to convey the gold had been taken strangely and suddenly ill at the last moment.
‘There’s Jim Pollock,’ said the bank manager, looking round for a substitute, ‘he’ll do. He is big enough to knock the head off anyone that interferes with him.’
So Jim Pollock had the heavy responsibility thrust upon him. The big fellow who would tackle any man in England in a football rush without a thought of fear was as nervous as a two-year-old child. All the way down to this point his watchful eyes and strong right hand had never left the bag for a moment. But here at the Eddiscombe Junction he had got locked in alone to a single first-class carriage, and there was a clear run of forty-seven miles to the next stoppage.
So with a sigh and shrug of relief, he threw away his anxiety, lay back on the soft seat, lit a pipe, drew a sporting paper from his pocket, and was speedily absorbed in the account of the Rugby International Championship match, for Jim himself was not without hopes of his ‘cap’ in the near future.
The train rattled out of the station and settled down to its smooth easy stride—a good fifty miles an hour through the open country.
Still absorbed in his paper he did not notice the gleam of two stealthy keen eyes that watched him from the dark shadow under the opposite seat. He did not see that long lithe wiry figure uncoil and creep out, silently as a snake, across the floor of the carriage.
He saw nothing and felt nothing till he felt two murderous hands clutching at his throat and a knee crushing his chest in.
Jim was strong, but before his sleeping strength had time to waken, he was down on his back on the carriage floor with a handkerchief soaked in chloroform jammed close to his mouth and nostrils.
He struggled desperately for a moment or so, half rose and almost flung off his clinging assailant. But even as he struggled the dreamy drug stole strength and sense away; he fell back heavily and lay like a log on the carriage floor.
The faithful fellow’s last thought as his senses left him was ‘The gold is gone.’ It was his first thought as he awoke with dizzy pain and racked brain from the deathlike swoon. The train was still at full speed; the carriage doors were still locked; but the carriage empty and the bag was gone.
He searched despairingly in the racks, under the seats—all empty. Jim let the window down with a clash and bellowed.
The train began to slacken speed and rumble into the station. Half a dozen porters ran together—the station-master following more leisurely as beseemed his dignity. Speedily a crowd gathered round the door.
‘I have been robbed,’ Jim shouted, ‘of a black bag with £5,000 in it!’
Then the superintendent pushed his way through the crowd.
‘Where were you robbed, sir?’ he said with a suspicious look at the dishevelled and excited Jim.
‘Between this and Eddiscombe Junction.’
‘Impossible, sir, there is no stoppage between this and Eddiscombe, and the carriage is empty.’
‘I thought it was empty at Eddiscombe, but there must have been a man under the seat.’
‘There is no man under the seat now,’ retorted the superintendent curtly, ‘you had better tell your story to the police. There is a detective on the platform.’
Jim told his story to the detective, who listened gravely and told him that he must consider himself in custody pending inquiries.
A telegram was sent to Eddiscombe, and it was found that communication had been stopped. This must have happened quite recently, for a telegram had gone through less than an hour before. The breakage was quickly located about nine miles outside Eddiscombe. Some of the wires had been pulled down halfway to the ground, and the insulators smashed to pieces on one of the poles. All round the place the ground was trampled with heavy footprints which passed through a couple of fields out on the high road and were lost. No other clue of any kind was forthcoming.
The next day but one, a card, with the name ‘Sir Gregory Grant’, was handed to Dora Myrl as she sat hard at work in the little drawing-room which she called her study. A portly, middle-aged, benevolent gentleman followed the card into the room.
‘Miss Myrl?’ he said, extending his hand, ‘I have heard of you from my friend, Lord Millicent. I have come to entreat your assistance. I am the senior partner of the banking firm of Gower and Grant. You have heard of the railway robbery, I suppose?’
‘I have heard all the paper had to tell me.’
‘There is little more to tell. I have called on you personally, Miss Myrl, because, personally, I am deeply interested in the case.
It is not so much the money though the amount is, of course, serious. But the honour of the bank is at stake. We have always prided ourselves on treating our clerks well, and heretofore we have reaped the reward. For nearly a century there has not been a single case of fraud or dishonesty amongst them. It is a proud record for our bank, and we should like to keep it unbroken if possible. Suspicion is heavy on young James Pollock. I want him punished, of course, if he is guilty, but I want him cleared if he is innocent. That’s why I came to you.’
‘The police think?’
‘Oh, they think there can be no doubt about his guilt. They have their theory pat. No one was in the carriage—no one could leave it. Pollock threw out the bag to an accomplice along the line. They even pretend to find the mark in the ground where the heavy bag fell—a few hundred yards nearer to Eddiscombe than where the wires were pulled down.’
‘What has been done?’
‘They have arrested the lad and sent out the “Hue and Cry” for a man with a very heavy calfskin bag—that’s all. They are quite sure they have caught the principal thief anyway.’
‘And you?’
‘I will be frank with you, Miss Myrl. I have my doubts. The case seems conclusive. It is impossible that anybody could have got out of the train at full speed. But I have seen the lad, and I have my doubts.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘I would be very glad if you did.’
After five minutes’ conversation with Jim Pollock, Dora drew Sir Gregory aside.
‘I think I see my way,’ she said, ‘I will undertake the case on one condition.’
‘Any fee that…’
‘It’s not the fee. I never talk of the fee till the case is over. I will undertake the case if you give me Mr Pollock to help me. Your instinct was right, Sir Gregory: the boy is innocent.’
There was much grumbling amongst the police when a nolle prosequi was entered on behalf of the bank, and James Pollock was discharged from custody, and it was plainly hinted the Crown would interpose.
Meanwhile Pollock was off by a morning train with Miss Dora Myrl, from London to Eddiscombe. He was brimming over with gratitude and devotion. Of course they talked of the robbery on the way down.
‘The bag was very heavy, Mr Pollock?’ Dora asked.
‘I’d sooner carry it one mile than ten, Miss Myrl.’
‘Yet you are pretty strong, I should think.’
She touched his protruding biceps professionally with her finger tips, and he coloured to the roots of his hair.
‘Would you know the man that robbed you if you saw him again?’ Dora asked.
‘Not from Adam. He had his hands on my throat, the chloroform crammed into my mouth before I knew where I was. It was about nine or ten miles outside Eddiscombe. You believe there was a man—don’t you, Miss Myrl? You are about the only person that does. I don’t blame them, for how did the chap get out of the train going at the rate of sixty miles an hour—that’s what fetches me, ’pon my word,’ he concluded incoherently; ‘if I was any other chap I’d believe myself guilty on the evidence. Can you tell me how the trick was done, Miss Myrl?’
‘That’s my secret for the present, Mr Pollock, but I may tell you this much, when we get to the pretty little town of Eddiscombe I will look out for a stranger with a crooked stick instead of a black bag.’
There were three hotels in Eddiscombe, but Mr Mark Brown and his sister were hard to please. They tried the three in succession, keeping their eyes about them for a stranger with a crooked stick, and spending their leisure time in exploring the town and country on a pair of capital bicycles, which they hired by the week.
As Miss Brown (alias Dora Myrl) was going down the stairs of the third hotel one sunshiny afternoon a week after their arrival, she met midway, face to face, a tall middle-aged man limping a little, a very little, and leaning on a stout oak stick, with a dark shiny varnish, and a crooked handle. She passed him without a second glance. But that evening she gossiped with the chambermaid, and learned that the stranger was a commercial traveller—Mr McCrowder—who had been staying some weeks at the hotel, with an occasional run up to London in the train, and run round the country on his bicycle, ‘a nice, easily-pleased, pleasant-spoken gentleman,’ the chambermaid added on her own account.
Next day Dora Myrl met the stranger again in the same place on the stairs. Was it her awkwardness or his? As she moved aside to let him pass, her little foot caught in the stick, jerked it from his hand, and sent it clattering down the stairs into the hall.
She ran swiftly down the stairs in pursuit, and carried it back with a pretty apology to the owner. But not before she had seen on the inside of the crook a deep notch, cutting through the varnish into the wood.
At dinner that day their table adjoined Mr McCrowder’s. Halfway through the meal she asked Jim to tell her what the hour was, as her watch had stopped. It was a curious request, for she sat facing the clock, and he had to turn round to see it. But Jim turned obediently, and came face to face with Mr McCrowder, who started and stared at the sight of him as though he had seen a ghost. Jim stared back stolidly without a trace of recognition in his face, and Mr McCrowder, after a moment, resumed his dinner. Then Dora set, or seemed to set and wind, her watch, and so the curious little incident closed.
That evening Dora played a musical little jingle on the piano in their private sitting-room, touching the notes abstractedly and apparently deep in thought. Suddenly she closed the piano with a bang.
‘Mr Pollock?’
‘Well, Miss Myrl,’ said Jim, who had been watching her with the patient, honest, stupid admiration of a big Newfoundland dog.
‘We will take a ride together on our bicycles tomorrow. I cannot say what hour, but have them ready when I call for them.’
‘Yes, Miss Myrl.’
‘And bring a ball of stout twine in your pocket.’
‘Yes, Miss Myrl.’
‘By the way, have you a revolver?’
‘Never had such a thing in my life.’
‘Could you use it if you got it?’
‘I hardly know the butt from the muzzle, but’—modestly—‘I can fight a little bit with my fists if that’s any use.’
‘Not the least in this case. An ounce of lead can stop a fourteen-stone champion. Besides one six-shooter is enough, and I’m not too bad a shot.’
‘You don’t mean to say, Miss Myrl, that you…’
‘I don’t mean to say one word more at present, Mr Pollock, only have the bicycles ready when I want them and the twine.’
Next morning after an exceptionally early breakfast, Dora took her place with a book in her hand coiled up on a sofa in a bow-window of the empty drawing-room that looked out on the street. She kept one eye on her book and the other on the window from which the steps of the hotel were visible.
About half-past nine o’clock she saw Mr McCrowder go down the steps, not limping at all, but carrying his bicycle with a big canvas bicycle bag strapped to the handlebar.
In a moment she was down in the hall where the bicycles stood ready; in another she and Pollock were in the saddle sailing swiftly and smoothly along the street just as the tall figure of Mr McCrowder was vanishing round a distant corner.
‘We have got to keep him in sight,’ Dora whispered to her companion as they sped along, ‘or rather I have got to keep him and you to keep me in sight. Now let me go to the front; hold as far back as you can without losing me, and the moment I wave a white handkerchief—scorch!’
Pollock nodded and fell back, and in this order—each about half a mile apart—the three riders swept out of the town into the open country.
The man in front was doing a strong steady twelve miles an hour, but the roads were good and Dora kept her distance without an effort, while Pollock held himself back. For a full hour this game of follow-my-leader was played without a change.
Mr McCrowder had left the town at the opposite direction to the railway, but now he began to wheel round towards the line. Once he glanced behind and saw only a single girl cycling in the distance on the deserted road. The next time he saw no one, for Dora rode close to the inner curve.
They were now a mile or so from the place where the telegraph wires had been broken down, and Dora, who knew the lie of the land, felt sure their little bicycle trip was drawing to a close.
The road climbed a long easy winding slope thickly wooded on either side. The man in front put on a spurt; Dora answered it with another, and Pollock behind sprinted fiercely, lessening his distance from Dora. The leader crossed the top bend of the slope, turned a sharp curve, and went swiftly down a smooth decline, shaded by the interlacing branches of great trees.
Half a mile down at the bottom of the slope, he leaped suddenly from his bicycle with one quick glance back the way he had come. There was no one in view, for Dora held back at the turn. He ran his bicycle close into the wall on the left hand side where a deep trench hid it from the casual passers by; unstrapped the bag from the handlebar, and clambered over the wall with an agility that was surprising in one of his (apparent) age.
Dora was just round the corner in time to see him leap from the top of the wall into the thick wood. At once she drew out and waved her white handkerchief, then settled herself in the saddle and made her bicycle fly through the rush of a sudden wind, down the slope.
Pollock saw the signal; bent down over his handlebar and pedalled uphill like the piston rods of a steam engine.
The man’s bicycle by the roadside was a finger post for Dora. She, in her turn, over-perched the wall as lightly as a bird. Gathering her tailor-made skirt tightly around her, she peered and listened intently. She could see nothing, but a little way in front a slight rustling of the branches caught her quick ears. Moving in the underwood, stealthily and silently as a rabbit, she caught a glimpse through the leaves of a dark grey tweed suit fifteen or twenty yards off. A few steps more and she had a clear view. The man was on his knees; he had drawn a black leather bag from a thick tangle of ferns at the foot of a great old beech tree, and was busy cramming a number of small canvas sacks into his bicycle bag.
Blood on the Tracks Page 6
