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 that
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 board-room 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 of the 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 the 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 on the afternoon in question, that he remembered me, and that,
there being one or two empty first-class compartments on that special
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.
"You hear this person's statement, Mr. Langford," said the chairman. "It
contradicts yours in every particular. What have you to say in reply?"
"I can only repeat what I said before. I am quite as positive of the
truth of my own assertions as Mr. Somers can be of the truth of his."
"You say that Mr. Dwerrihouse alighted at Blackwater, and that he was in
possession of a private key. Are you sure that he had not alighted by
means of that key before the guard came round for the tickets?"
"I am quite positive that he did not leave the carriage till the train
had fairly entered the station, and the other Blackwater passengers
alighted. I even saw that he was met there by a friend."
"Indeed! Did you see that person distinctly?"
"Quite distinctly."
"Can you describe his appearance?"
"I think so. He was short and very slight, sandy-haired, with a bushy
moustache and beard, and he wore a loosely fitting suit of grey tweed.
His age I should take to be about thirty-eight or forty."
"Did Mr. Dwerrihouse leave the station in this person's company?"
"I cannot tell. I saw them walking together down the platform, and then
I saw them standing aside under a gas-jet, talking earnestly. After
that I lost sight of them quite suddenly, and just then my train went
on, and I with it."
The chairman and secretary conferred together in an undertone. The
directors whispered to one another. One or two looked suspiciously at
the guard. I could see that my evidence remained unshaken, and that,
like myself, they suspected some complicity between the guard and the
defaulter.
"How far did you conduct that 4:15 express on the day in question,
Somers?" asked the chairman.
"All through, sir," replied the guard, "from London to Crampton."
"How was it that you were not relieved at Clayborough? I thought there
was always a change of guards at Clayborough."
"There used to be, sir, till the new regulations came in force last
midsummer, since when the guards in charge of express trains go the
whole way through."
The chairman turned to the secretary.
"I think it would be as well," he said, "if we had the day-book to refer
to upon this point."
Again the secretary touched the silver hand-bell, and desired the porter
in attendance to summon Mr. Raikes. From a word or two dropped by
another of the directors I gathered that Mr. Raikes was one of the
under-secretaries.
He came, a small, slight, sandy-haired, keen-eyed man, with an eager,
nervous manner, and a forest of light beard and moustache. He just
showed himself at the door of the board-room, and, being requested to
bring a certain day-book from a certain shelf in a certain room, bowed
and vanished.
He was there such a moment, and the surprise of seeing him was so great
and sudden, that it was not till the door had closed upon him that I
found voice to speak. He was no sooner gone, however, than I sprang to
my feet.
"That person," I said, "is the same who met Mr. Dwerrihouse upon the
platform at Blackwater!"
There was a general movement of surprise. The chairman looked grave and
somewhat agitated.
"Take care, Mr. Langford," he said; "take care what you say."
"I am as positive of his identity as of my own."
"Do you consider the consequences of your words? Do you consider that
you are bringing a charge of the gravest character against one of the
company's servants?"
"I am willing to be put upon my oath, if necessary. The man who came to
that door a minute since is the same whom I saw talking with Mr.
Dwerrihouse on the Blackwater platform. Were he twenty times the
company's servant, I could say neither more nor less."
The chairman turned again to the guard.
"Did you see Mr. Raikes in the train or on the platform?" he asked.
Somers shook his head.
"I am confident Mr. Raikes was not in the train," he said, "and I
certainly did not see him on the platform."
The chairman turned next to the secretary.
"Mr. Raikes is in your office, Mr. Hunter," he said. "Can you remember
if he was absent on the 4th instant?"
"I do not think he was," replied the secretary, "but I am not prepared
to speak positively. I have been away most afternoons myself lately, and
Mr. Raikes might easily have absented himself if he had been disposed."
At this moment the under-secretary returned with the day-book under his
arm.
"Be pleased to refer, Mr. Raikes," said the chairman, "to the entries of
the 4th instant, and see what Benjamin Somers's duties were on that
day."
Mr. Raikes threw open the cumbrous volume, and ran a practised eye and
finger down some three or four successive columns of entries. Stopping
suddenly at the foot of a page, he then read aloud that Benjamin Somers
had on that day conducted the 4:15 express from London to Crampton.
The chairman leaned forward in his seat, looked the under-secretary full
in the face, and said, quite sharply and suddenly:
"And where were _you_, Mr. Raikes, on the same afternoon?"
"_I_, sir?"
"You, Mr. Raikes. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the 4th
of the present month?"
"Here, sir, in Mr. Hunter's office. Where else should I be?"
There was a dash of trepidation in the under-secretary's voice as he
said this, but his look of surprise was natural enough.
"We have some reason for believing, Mr. Raikes, that you were absent
that afternoon without leave. Was this the case?"
"Certainly not, sir. I have not had a day's holiday since September. Mr.
Hunter will bear me out in this."
Mr. Hunter repeated what he had previously said on the subject, but
added that the clerks in the adjoining office would be certain to know.
Whereupon the senior clerk, a grave, middle-aged person in green
glasses, was summoned and interrogated.
His testimony cleared the under-secretary at once. He declared that Mr.
Raikes had in no instance, to his knowledge, been absent during office
hours since his return from his annual holiday in September.
I was confounded. The chairman turned to me with a smile, in which a
shade of covert annoyance was scarcely apparent.
"You hear, Mr. Langford?" he said.
"I hear, sir; but my conviction remains unshaken."
"I fear, Mr. Langford, that your convictions are very insufficiently
based," replied the chairman, with a doubtful cough. "I fear that you
'dream dreams,' and mistake them for actual occurrences. It is a
dangerous habit of mind, and might lead to dangerous results. Mr. Raikes
here would have found himself in an unpleasant position had he not
proved so satisfactory an alibi."
I was about to reply, but he gave me no time.
"I think, gentlemen," he went on to say, addressing the board, "that we
should be wasting time to push this inquiry further. Mr. Langford's
evidence would seem to be of an equal value throughout. The testimony of
Benjamin Somers disproves his first statement, and the testimony of the
last witness disproves the second. I think we may conclude that Mr.
Langford fell asleep in the train on the occasion of his journey to
Clayborough, and dreamed an unusually vivid and circumstantial dream, of
which, however, we have now heard quite enough."
There are few things more annoying than to find one's positive
convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling impatient at
the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof against the civil
sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable of all, however, was
the quiet smile lurking about the corners of Benjamin Somers's mouth,
and the half-triumphant, half-malicious gleam in the eyes of the
under-secretary. The man was evidently puzzled and somewhat alarmed. His
looks seemed furtively to interrogate me. Who was I? What did I want?
Why had I come there to do him an ill turn with his employers? What was
it to me whether or no he was absent without leave?
Seeing all this, and perhaps irritated by it more than the thing
deserved, I begged leave to detain the attention of the board for a
moment longer. Jelf plucked me impatiently by the sleeve.
"Better let the thing drop," he whispered. "The chairman's right enough;
you dreamed it, and the less said now the better."
I was not to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet something
to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that dreams were not
usually productive of tangible results, and that I requested to know in
what way the chairman conceived I had evolved from my dream so
substantial and well-made a delusion as the cigar-case which I had had
the honour to place before him at the commencement of our interview.
"The cigar-case, I admit, Mr. Langford," the chairman replied, "is a
very strong point in your evidence. It is your _only_ strong point,
however, and there is just a possibility that we may all be misled by a
mere accidental resemblance. Will you permit me to see the case again?"
"It is unlikely," I said, as I handed it to him, "that any other should
bear precisely this monogram, and yet be in all other particulars
exactly similar."
The chairman examined it for a moment in silence, and then passed it to
Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter turned it over and over, and shook his head.
"This is no mere resemblance," he said. "It is John Dwerrihouse's
cigar-case to a certainty. I remember it perfectly; I have seen it a
hundred times."
"I believe I may say the same," added the chairman; "yet how account
for the way in which Mr. Langford asserts that it came into his
possession?"
"I can only repeat," I replied, "that I found it on the floor of the
carriage after Mr. Dwerrihouse had alighted. It was in leaning out to
look after him, that I trod upon it, and it was in running after him for
the purpose of restoring it that I saw, or believed I saw, Mr. Raikes
standing aside with him in earnest conversation."
Again I felt Jonathan Jelf plucking at my sleeve.
"Look at Raikes," he whispered; "look at Raikes!"
I turned to where the under-secretary had been standing a moment before,
and saw him, white as death, with lips trembling and livid, stealing
toward the door.
To conceive a sudden, strange, and indefinite suspicion, to fling myself
in his way, to take him by the shoulders as if he were a child, and turn
his craven face, perforce, toward the board, were with me the work of an
instant.
"Look at him!" I exclaimed. "Look at his face! I ask no better witness
to the truth of my words."
The chairman's brow darkened.
"Mr. Raikes," he said, sternly, "if you know anything you had better
speak."
Vainly trying to wrench himself from my grasp, the under-secretary
stammered out an incoherent denial.
"Let me go," he said. "I know nothing--you have no right to detain
me--let me go!"
"Did you, or did you not, meet Mr. John Dwerrihouse at Blackwater
station? The charge brought against you is either true or false. If
true, you will do well to throw yourself upon the mercy of the board and
make full confession of all that you know."
The under-secretary wrung his hands in an agony of helpless terror.
"I was away!" he cried. "I was two hundred miles away at the time! I
know nothing about it--I have nothing to confess--I am innocent--I call
God to witness I am innocent!"
"Two hundred miles away!" echoed the chairman. "What do you mean?"
"I was in Devonshire. I had three weeks' leave of absence--I appeal to
Mr. Hunter--Mr. Hunter knows I had three weeks' leave of absence! I was
in Devonshire all the time; I can prove I was in Devonshire!"
Seeing him so abject, so incoherent, so wild with apprehension, the
directors began to whisper gravely among themselves, while one got
quietly up and called the porter to guard the door.
"What has your being in Devonshire to do with the matter?" said the
chairman. "When were you in Devonshire?"
"Mr. Raikes took his leave in September," said the secretary, "about the
time when Mr. Dwerrihouse disappeared."
"I never even heard that he had disappeared till I came back!"
"That must remain to be proved," said the chairman. "I shall at once put
this matter in the hands of the police. In the meanwhile, Mr. Raikes,
being myself a magistrate and used to deal with these cases, I advise
you to offer no resistance, but to confess while confession may yet do
you service. As for your accomplice----"
The frightened wretch fell upon his knees.
"I had no accomplice!" he cried. "Only have mercy upon me--only spare my
life, and I will confess all! I didn't mean to harm him! I didn't mean
to hurt a hair of his head! Only have mercy on me, and let me go!"
The chairman rose in his place, pale and agitated. "Good Heavens!" he
exclaimed, "what horrible mystery is this? What does it mean?"
"As sure as there is a God in heaven," said Jonathan Jelf, "it means
that murder has been done."
"No! no! no!" shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering like a
beaten hound. "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring it in
murder. I thought I had only stunned him--I never meant to do more than
stun him. Manslaughter--manslaughter--not murder!"
Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman
covered his face with his hand and for a moment or two remained silent.
"Miserable man," he said at length, "you have betrayed yourself."
"You bade me confess! You urged me to throw myself upon the mercy of the
board!"
"You have confessed to a crime which no one suspected you of having
committed," replied the chairman, "and which this board has no power
either to punish or forgive. All that I can do for you is to advise you
to submit to the law, to plead guilty, and to conceal nothing. When did
you do this deed?"
The guilty man rose to his feet, and leaned heavily against the table.
His answer came reluctantly, like the speech of one dreaming.
"On the 22nd of September."
"On the 22nd of September!" I looked in Jonathan Jelf's face, and he in
mine. I felt my own paling with a strange sense of wonder and dread. I
saw him blanch suddenly, even to the lips.
"Merciful heaven!" he whispered. "_What was it, then, that you saw in
the train?_"
* * * * *
What was it that I saw in the train? That question remains unanswered to
this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I only know that it
bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose body had then been
lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of branches and brambles and
rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted chalk-pit about half-way
between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know that it spoke and moved and
looked as that man spoke and moved and looked in life; that I heard, or
seemed to hear, things related which I could never otherwise have
learned; that I was guided, as it were, by that vision on the platform
to the identification of the murderer; and that, a passive instrument
myself, I was destined, by means of these mysterious teachings, to bring
about the ends of justice. For these things I have never been able to
account.
As for that matter of the cigar-case, it proved, on inquiry, that the
carriage in which I travelled down that afternoon to Clayborough had not
been in use for several weeks, and was, in point of fact, the same in
which poor John Dwerrihouse had performed his last journey. The case had
doubtless been dropped by him, and had lain unnoticed till I found it.
Upon the details of the murder I have no need to dwell. Those who desire
more ample particulars may find them, and the written confession of
Augustus Raikes, in the files of the "Times" for 1856. Enough that the
under-secretary, knowing the history of the new line, and following the
negotiation step by step through all its stages, determined to waylay
Mr. Dwerrihouse, rob him of the seventy-five thousand pounds, and escape
to America with his booty.