The Bradmoor Murder

by Melville Davisson Post

  That, of course, was the only explanation he had. That was the only explanation anyone could have. Of course there wasn’t any explanation. What sane person could believe in witches or in a magic that transported one from a modern, workaday world to a land of fairies; that took an ancient, feeble crone, so old that she had to be carried about, and forced her by a harsh cry to sing like a fabled siren in faërie lands forlorn!

  Of course there wasn’t any explanation.

  The man went out after a while, but he said that he did a thing that any one of us would have done. He said that he went about the room touching objects in it, replacing chairs, adjusting the table, trying the door latch.

  You see what he was after!

  He was trying to convince himself that he was in a world of reality—just what any of us would have done—that he was, in fact, here in this place; that the place had not changed; that it was the same place.

  After that he went out.

  There was only one explanation of it that didn’t overturn every landmark of our common reason. He believed himself to be a victim of some hypnotic influence, as the traveler in some city of the East, in an enclosed courtyard, sees a rope thrown into the air by a juggler, and a lad climb it into the sky, disappearing, a tiny figure in some cloud haze.

  That was the explanation Letington finally got about it. He had to take that or go adrift. But it seemed neither an adequate nor a true explanation of the phenomenon.

  It was the voice that he could not escape from. That voice was real. The singing was real. He could differentiate the effects from the voice. The effects were illusions, but that haunting, heavenly voice was a reality! He could no more doubt the reality of it than he could doubt the reality of the sunlight, or the outline of the forest in the distance, or his hand. The voice was real, and it affected him as had no other singing in the world.

  He never heard a voice like it.

  He could not escape from the lure of that voice. It seemed to have entered into every fiber of his body: something he had long sought; something he had hungered for; something he had waited for from the time he was born—and from beyond that—from the beginning of the world.

  I am taking a lot of pains to try to make these impressions clear to you, for they are a vital part of this extraordinary thing. Perhaps you can, in some manner, realize how the thing impressed this man. I suppose one would have to call it an exclusive personal element. There was a feeling that the voice had something to do with himself, as differentiated from other persons; as though no one but himself could have heard it, or as though it could have been intended for no other person. It was his due: belonged to him out of some other existence.

  That is as near as I can get it out of the elaboration that Sir Godfrey Simon gave me. At any rate, that was the end of it. Things went on. Letington imagined himself to have been present at an inexplicable phenomenon, a sort of hypnotic phenomenon. It had put his reason out of dominance. He had a feeling of anxiety about events now that he could neither define nor control.

  And it was a correct premonition.

  He went ahead endeavoring to put into effect the policy of eviction that he had been sent here to accomplish. The Italian colony made no further protest. It carried out the preliminaries of his direction. The notices posted were not disturbed. The orders for inventories on materials and tools were carried out. The first preliminaries of the eviction went forward, and there was no disorder. There was not even discourtesy.

  Everywhere he was received with the same deference; his directions were received with the same silent acquiescence. But it was a calm that had too much serenity in it. He did not like it. He would have felt safer if he had found groups of men talking together; evidences of violence here and there; protests, or ugly threats echoed after him as he passed: that is to say, the usual thing that one expects and can understand. But he did not find it. The whole colony was composed, silent and obsequious. It got on the man’s nerves.

  And then suddenly the thing happened.

  Winter was beginning to arrive. At twilight one evening the great transcontinental was stopped by an emergency signal. Snow was beginning to fall. It was on a slight grade beyond the Italian village. When the train stopped there was an insistent call for the fireman and engineer to come to the rear of the train. They got down and went back along the coaches. It was now coming on to snow heavily. They passed down on either side of the coaches to the end of the train. But they could find no reason for the emergency signal. No official in the coaches knew anything about it, and no one could be found who had called. The conductor joined them. They went to the extreme end of the train, but they could find nothing to indicate why such a signal should have been given.

  And when they returned the engine was gone!

  It had disappeared. The train officials released the brakes and ran the passenger coaches back into the village. Letington, awakened at one o’clock in the morning, was told of this mysterious event.

  Don’t forget where I was when I got this story. Keep that in your mind. I was before a peat fire in an inn in Belgium, as I told you in the beginning. I had turned about from the table. I was wet, and my clothes steamed, but I was comfortable with an excellent dinner. There was a bottle of wine on the table, and Sir Godfrey Simon on the other side of it. You will remember what I said about him. A big, old man with a perfectly bald head—a head as bald as an ivory door handle—a crooked nose; a wide, narrow-lipped mouth; little, sharp eyes under craggy eye pits; shaggy, arched brows over them.

  It is his story that I am trying to tell you—not mine.

  I know nothing about it, except what the man said. That I precisely know. I remember every detail. No word of it escaped me. It was the most extraordinary tale I had ever heard, in the most extraordinary setting, surrounded by the most extraordinary suggestions.

  I was lost, and I had turned up as by the directions of the fairies at this inn, by this Garden in Asia and the long, iron-spiked fence that seemed, as I have said, to stretch across Belgium, across Europe, across the world.

  That was the hard background behind all this extravaganza. It was the thing at my back. That is a pretty good expression. It was the Garden in Asia at my back that made the whole of this story such a wonder.

  I go back to Letington and the disaster he was awakened out of sleep to meet. Of course there could, in fact, be no mystery to speak of about the matter. A great passenger engine could not disappear. Stop a moment and realize it: a thing of complicated machinery weighing five hundred thousand pounds. It was a late model of the American passenger engine, one of these huge monsters built to haul a long train over mountains across a continent.

  Such engines are unknown in any European country.

  It would weigh, as I have said, some two hundred and fifty tons. Try to get a conception of such a mass of metal. And it was valuable. It was worth a hundred thousand dollars. It could not be made to disappear at the will of a peasant woman burning a ball of aromatic grass and uttering a verbal formula.

  Of course it had been cut off from the train and run forward in the absence of the engineer and fireman, who had been drawn back to the rear of the passenger coaches by what they took to be the call of the conductor.

  It was a clever trick in a snowstorm.

  But where could the engine have been taken? It was a single-track road, and short, connecting the two branches of the transcontinental line. As it passed through the valley one saw from it only the little mills that dotted the lumber yards; the great sheds under which the hemlock bark was stored for shipment to the tanneries, looking like immense hillocks covered with roofs of bark; the scattered villages of the lumbermen; the narrow river; and beyond the vast mountains that seemed to extend into the sky.

  The engine could not have gone back, because the passenger coaches were behind it. These coaches had been released and run down the grade to the Italian village. The engine had to go forward.

  As I have said, there could not be very much of
a mystery about it, and, in fact, there was not any mystery about it.

  There was a tunnel through a shoulder of the mountain just beyond where the engine had been cut off. Letington and his track crew, going over the line in the morning, found the entrances to this tunnel shot down.

  It was clear now what had occurred.

  The engine had been run into the tunnel and the ends of the tunnel shot down with explosives to prevent it from being taken out. The whole thing had been done cleverly and with Italian cunning.

  But there was no mystery about it.

  The agents carrying the thing into effect had selected a night of storm, one of those nights of early winter when heavy snow was approaching. They had given an emergency signal. It would be easy to do that. Any one of them could have boarded the train as a passenger and given such a signal precisely as the conductor or officials in the rear of the train might have given it. And they could have called the engineer and fireman to the rear of the train, precisely as the conductor might have done. There was no difficulty about this part of the business.

  There was no particular difficulty about the other part. The Italian colony operating the plant contained more than one competent engineer. Any one of them could have handled this engine, or any engine. They could cut it loose from the train and run it forward in the absence of the engineer and fireman, especially in a snowstorm in the night. And that was precisely what had been done.

  Letington was not misled about it.

  He knew what had happened, and when he found the entrances to the tunnel on either side of the shoulder of this mountain shot down with explosives, as though there had been a landslide, he knew where the engine was.

  In fact, the thing was all so simple that the man began to wonder at the circumlocutions of pretended magic that had accompanied it. That, however, would be the Latin mind. But to the hard Anglo-Saxon intelligence it seemed a sort of child’s play.

  What value, in fact, was to be obtained by all this extravaganza surrounding so evident and practical a fact?

  Nevertheless, there was the situation to be met.

  The great train could not go over the line, and the engine was sealed up in a tunnel. The work had been done thoroughly.

  As I have said, the approaches to the tunnel looked as though they had been covered with a landslide. The persons who undertook this thing carried it out effectively. The shoulder of mountain on either side of the tunnel had been shot down to cover the entrance. It was a big undertaking to clear it, and besides the snow made the work more difficult. It continued to fall. It was one of those heavy storms that bring winter into this north country.

  Letington was very much concerned about this disaster, and he put everybody on inquisition, but of course he could discover nothing.

  No one in the whole colony knew anything about it. They had seen nothing; heard nothing.

  There was not a word, a gesture, or an incident that he could get hold of that could connect the affair with anybody.

  Every man in the colony demonstrated that he was about his usual affairs at this hour. Everybody could establish an alibi. There was not a court in Christendom that could have found a clew to connect anybody in the colony with this affair. There was no one in this Italian settlement who would admit any connection with the affair, with the single exception of the Italian peasant woman. She admitted it.

  She came into the office where Letington would be holding his courts of inquiry, and she would stand there and look at him with her strange, ironical smile.

  She laughed at his explanation; at the effort he was making; at his practical solution of the difficulty. He would never get his engine out from under the mountain. She had made that engine to disappear!

  And this gave him further anxiety.

  He took it to mean that the engine had been destroyed in the tunnel. He was now greatly alarmed. The safety of the train and the contract of the company to secure the daily safe passage over the line would bankrupt the enterprise, already heavily involved. The man saw complete disaster before him.

  Of course there was only one thing to do, and that was to uncover the approaches to the tunnel and get the engine out as soon as he could.

  Here he was met with a further concern. The Italian labor, which he must make use of, would perhaps either refuse to work or it would hinder his efforts in some way. This meant that the undertaking would go forward slowly; and in the meantime, if the engine were not already destroyed, it would be seriously injured. The tunnel would be damp; the delicate machinery of the engine would be injured by the rust.

  At the best he could hope for, there would be great delay, a violation of the contract with the transcontinental line and injury to the machinery.

  But could he, in fact, get it out?

  Could he depend on the Italian labor for this service?

  When he considered the whole matter he was firmly convinced that he could not. But in this conclusion he was conspicuously mistaken. He had not the slightest difficulty with the Italian laborers. They went to work at his direction to uncover the approaches to the tunnel. But the great snow delayed them, and after that was cleared away there were still tons of earth to be removed. It was like making a new cut into the shoulder of the mountain.

  Letington was uncertain what to do.

  He reported the accident briefly, by cable, to the English company. And then he made out a report of what had occurred. He had to send this report by mail. That would mean practically a month before he had a reply. The answer to his cable was to make no concession to the Italian colony; to put the tunnel in shape, and to go forward with the policy of eviction as he had been instructed. The English company would make whatever adjustments were necessary with the transcontinental line with which they had their agreement of carriage.

  Letington went forward under that instruction.

  One of the logging engines pulled the coaches back to the junction with the main line, and they went around in another direction to the main line beyond. In the meantime Letington went forward with the work of opening the tunnel.

  This work, as I have said, advanced slowly.

  The heavy winter weather continued. Snow fell and had continually to be removed. The shoulder of the mountain at the opening of the tunnel was sheer; the earth kept slipping in. Letington put every man at his disposal to work on the thing, and although he had no reason to complain of either the individual effort or the unity of effort of his crew, the advance was slow.

  Neither did he abandon his effort to discover who had been connected with the affair. Every morning at daylight he was with the crew at their work before the tunnel, and every night he conducted his court of inquiry in the office. The men, the women of the colony were examined; even the children were interrogated; but it was entirely useless.

  He never discovered anything.

  Everyone professed utter ignorance in the affair. They were just as much astonished and amazed as he was. When he asked them what had become of the engine they merely shrugged their shoulders: How did they know?

  And always the sturdy peasant woman was in the room with her strange, ironical smile. What was the use of all these inquiries or this questioning of men and children? She could tell him all about it. What had happened was precisely what she had warned him would happen. Why go forward with his ridiculous efforts to discover the author of this disaster? The author was before him. She had accomplished the thing. It was her work. She admitted it.

  She had caused the engine to disappear.

  And then she would add her Delphic sentence:

  “You will never get your engine out from under the mountain.”

  The thing got on the man’s nerves, and finally he abandoned any further effort to discover who were the criminal agents in this affair. He closed the office at night, gave up his courts of inquiry and devoted himself to the effort of opening the tunnel.

  I suppose a man never made a greater or more persistent effort than Letington did to drive a heading
into the tunnel. He was, as I said, profoundly disturbed. He was not puzzled. He knew where the engine was, and the intent of the thing was all clearly before him. But the veiled threat in the continually repeated sentence of the Italian woman more and more impressed him.

  “You will never get your engine out from under the mountain!”

  That might have two or three meanings. It might mean that the engine was not under the mountain. But that phase of the oracular expression he could at once dismiss. There was no other place that it could be. It could not have been run on over the line. It would have been discovered, of course. The line in a southern direction connected with the transcontinental line ahead. It could not have been taken in that direction. Nobody could conceal an immense passenger engine on a track. And there was no other place to take it.

  When one stops to think about it, what could be more conspicuous than a passenger engine?

  One could not put it in one’s pocket like a bauble nor tuck it under a board. The thing was, of course, out of the question; besides, here were the ends of the tunnel shot down. This feature of the matter did not concern him. He dismissed it precisely as you or I would have dismissed it. But the thing that did concern him was whether the engine was destroyed.

  “You will never get your engine out from under the mountain!”

  That would mean either that he would never get the tunnel clear, and therefore could not get it out, or it meant that the engine was, in fact, destroyed, and therefore he would not get it out.

  There was anxiety enough in either of these two alternatives.

  Of course his first impression was that the woman meant that he would not be able to uncover the openings of the tunnel. She could very well depend on that. He had only this Italian labor to use for the undertaking, and all of it, he could well assume, would be out of sympathy with his effort.

  But, as I have said, he was mistaken in that.

  He was looking for some indication of that intent all the time, but he never saw the slightest evidence of it. He had no complaint to make. He observed the men on day and night shifts. He thought, in the beginning, that when he went away from the work at night to sleep he would find in the morning that his night crew had done nothing or that it had done something to impair the work that had gone forward in the day. He was amazed when he found this was not true. The work of the crew at night had been as efficient and apparently as sincere in its efforts as the crew that he handled in the day.