IT was pleasant to get about the square of the station—where luggage had
to be labelled and heated passengers stormed at porters and a rather
stout brass bell was rung, and where at moments of pressure it did seem
that the world had suddenly gone mad—pleasant to stroll there and to feel
you were one of the few who recognised the identity of the quiet man
smoking a briar pipe and carrying an umbrella, over near the label case.
He was middle-aged, with an unobtrusive manner; in the summer he wore a
straw hat sedately; he seemed to be always waiting for a train that never
arrived. If a loiterer made his way into the station and stood about the
bookstall longer than seemed necessary, the quiet man would go near to
him, moving when he moved, stopping when he stopped, and losing no sight
of him until he went off. The quiet man had apparently no friends, and
the staff addressed him rarely.
Now the Station Master’s boy knew that this man was a retired member of
the police force, the plain-clothes detective attached to the terminus.
And in connection with a predecessor of this mysterious official they
told him, in the Up Parcels Office, an incident.
* * * * *
Sergeant Bellchambers had not succeeded in gaining the popularity that
most men, in this world, desire, but one or two of his first
investigations received favourable comment from the General Manager, and
this repaid him for lack of sympathy from others. It was said that in
the M division they had been glad to see him take his pension and go, the
opinion of the Inspector’s desk being that Bellchambers was a born
muddler. This might have been the invention of the station staff; what
was quite certain was that in his reports on blue paper in the early
cases referred to he fixed blame on men whom the station considered
innocent, and these men were, in consequence, fined or reduced.
Moreover, he had not been content with singling out individuals and
recommending them for the stocks, but he condemned an entire department;
for which reason the station said darkly:
“We shall ’ave to get our own back.”
This was the state of things when the cigar robberies began. Parcels of
cigars came up regularly from a certain firm and from a certain local
station, sometimes for delivery in London, sometimes for transfer to
another railway; one parcel in four reached its destination in good
appearance outwardly, but with part of the contents abstracted. The firm
made heavy claims, wrote furious letters, and at last managed to get a
communication into the public press in which bitter reference was made to
the supineness and slothful behaviour of the railway company. The
Superintendent of the Line sent for Bellchambers, withdrawing him from
easy duties on the station square.
“The only question is—” said the high official.
“Where do these robberies take place?” suggested Bellchambers. “That’s
the point,” he added sagely, “that’s what we’ve got to get at.”
“What is your opinion, Sergeant?”
Sergeant Bellchambers made a fine pretence of taking thought before he
answered. Then with red-ink pen he wrote on an envelope and passed it
across the table.
“Up Office,” read the Superintendent.
“’Ush,” said Bellchambers warningly.
“Do you think you can find the thieves?”
“If I’m given a free hand,” said Bellchambers, “and no quibble raised,
sir, about my petty disbursements.”
“Go in and win,” said the Superintendent. “When do you start?”
“This very night, sir?”
“Let me have a report in the morning.”
That evening the head of the department sent to the Up Office a new hand
to assist the late-duty men. He was black-bearded with a very ruddy
face, and he wore a uniform that had apparently belonged to a shorter and
a slimmer person. His name, he said, was Edward Jones, but the Up Office
seemed not contented with this and decided on the suggestion of a junior
clerk to call him by the title of “Sunset.” He settled to the work with
moderate determination, calling off parcels and sorting them into bins
for delivery with perhaps more intelligence than the raw amateur usually
showed: he spoke in a hoarse voice, and this he accounted for by
confessing himself a slave to tobacco; he discussed the matter with the
other men, between the arrival of trains, and seemed, not unnaturally,
more interested in those who smoked than in the one or two who limited
themselves to a cigarette a week, consumed after dinner on Sundays. The
Up Office always had a composite scent, in which fruit, game, cheese, and
other things mixed, with sometimes one gaining ascendancy, sometimes
another; a new flavour of a more pleasant and a vaguer character was
contributed presently by a small brown-paper-covered box, brought in from
an arrival platform, bearing a proud label:—