“I decline to be quoted,” said Woodring.

  “You could tell me, couldn’t you?”

  “I could. But I think it’s best that I didn’t.”

  “All right. Be mysterious. Where’s your compartment?”

  “Two cars back,” said Woodring. “But I don’t think I’ll return to it. A young lady has made up her mind to sleep there.”

  “Oh.” The dimple reappeared. “So you’re protecting your virtue?”

  “Virtue,” said Woodring, “is not one of my shortcomings. I simply don’t care for the lady’s company.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Leda Carmaine. Know her?”

  “No. What did she do to incur your dislike?”

  “Nothing,” said Woodring. “But I’m never apt to be very friendly with a lady who carries a steel dagger tucked under her garter.”

  “Garter? Well! That sounds friendly enough.”

  “I’m not sure I was supposed to see the dagger. I rather think not. I think Miss Carmaine overplayed her hand. Or her leg, to be more accurate.”

  The girl did not join in Woodring’s laughter. Her face was grave as she suggested, “Why don’t you stay in here, then?”

  Woodring shook his head. “Might compromise you.”

  “You might try,” the girl countered. “But I warn you it would be a waste of time.”

  “I could get my bearer for a chaperon at the next station,” said Woodring. “But I’d rather not. I don’t trust him.”

  “Then why did you hire him?”

  “I didn’t. That’s why I don’t trust him. He simply attached himself to me under protest.”

  “I don’t insist on a chaperon,” Ruth said. “I didn’t hire you either, but I think I trust you.”

  “You’ll have to, as far as Poradaha. And I may ask your indulgence until we reach Ishurdi. We’re due there around midnight.”

  “All right. I can promise you I’m carrying no concealed weapons,” Ruth smiled. “But you’ll have to take my word for it.”

  The Mail made only a short stop at Poradaha. Woodring and the girl sat behind closed shutters, listening to the station sounds. There was apparently not much activity on the platform. What little noise there was, soon subsided into thick hot silence. Then came the station-master’s whistle. Immediately afterwards Woodring heard the sound of some one fumbling with the catch on the compartment door. Ruth heard it, too, for she gave him an inquiring glance. The sound continued.

  “It’s the guard trying the doors,” Ruth said.

  “No, it’s not. The guard passed a minute ago.”

  Ruth Ingram lowered one of the shutters a crack, peered out. Her expression changed. Woodring heard something heavy thud against the door.

  “There’s a man—!” The girl’s speech was frantic. “He must be hurt! He’s fallen against the car! The train’s moving! He’ll be killed under the wheels!”

  Woodring sprang to the door, opened it. A man fell in, sprawled on the floor. Woodring pulled the man’s legs inside the compartment, slammed the door.

  The man lay as he had fallen, face downward. His white topi was jammed so tightly on his head that it had not come off, although the front of the brim was crushed by the impact.

  The car lurched as the Mail picked up speed.

  Woodring bent over the prostrate figure, seized the shoulders, turned the man on his back. He straightened up, frowning with bewilderment.

  The man on the floor was Emmet-Tansley.

  Ruth Ingram approached the inert, sprawling form, her eyes wide with horror and apprehension.

  “Is—is he dead?” she whispered.

  Woodring did not reply. He stooped beside Emmet-Tansley. The red-head lay with closed eyes. Woodring touched his hand; it was still warm.

  Emmet-Tansley sat up like a jack-in-the-box, opened his eyes.

  “Peek-a-boo!” he said thickly.

  Ruth Ingram laughed with almost hysterical relief. Woodring did not laugh.

  “Thought I was dead, what?” said Emmet-Tansley. “Matter of fact, I’m not even dead drunk.”

  “But you might have been killed,” Ruth Ingram protested.

  “Killed?” Woodring snorted. His lips made a tight, grim line. “He wouldn’t have been killed. He knew what he was doing. He was probably hanging on to something until the moment I opened the door. This was just a trick to get in here.”

  “Do you know him?” the girl asked.

  “I know that he’s been popping up at the most unlikely times and with too much regularity for mere coincidence,” Woodring declared.

  “My dear fellow, you’re quite wrong,” protested Emmet-Tansley, still seated on the floor. “It was pure coincidence that I, occupying the adjoining compartment, saw you get in here at the last station. I thereupon resolved to offer you a drink at the earliest opportunity. May I—?”

  “Let’s quit this stupid pretending!” Woodring interrupted. “You’re following me!”

  “On the contrary, old bean,” Emmet-Tansley countered, trying unsuccessfully to get to his feet. “You’re following me. After all, I live and work in Darjeeling. So why shouldn’t I be going back to my job after a brief holiday in the Second City of the Empire? Or, on the other hand, why should I? I hate the job … Have a drink?”

  As a result of a series of complicated manœuvres, Emmet-Tansley finally stood upright. He produced a flask from his pocket.

  “No, thanks,” said Woodring curtly.

  “Woodring, old bean, I have a confession to make,” said Emmet-Tansley. He sat down abruptly as the train lurched around a curve. “I drink too much, Woodring. This is strictly confidential. I wouldn’t want it to get back to my employers. But it’s true. I drink to drown a great disappointment.”

  He paused. Woodring continued to glare at him suspiciously. Ruth Ingram, however, seemed greatly amused by the tipsy red-head.

  “Was she blonde?” asked Ruth. “Or brunette?”

  “Neither,” replied Emmet-Tansley solemnly. “With all due respect to you and your sex, madam, it was nothing so trivial which drove me to drink. It was disappointment in myself, disappointment in Henry Emmet-Tansley, a young man of great promise, pride of Cambridge, Senior Wrangler in his mathematical Tripos but who cannot reconcile the Einstein theories and Planck’s quantum equation. You would drink, too, madam, if you had so far failed to fulfil your brilliant promise that not only could you not make head nor tail of Einstein, but had become a miserable master of algebra in a school for boys in Darjeeling!”

  Ruth Ingram laughed.

  “You’re very glib, Emmet-Tansley,” Woodring interrupted again. “And Miss Ingram apparently finds you amusing. But—”

  “Woodring, old bean, are you calling me a liar?”

  “What do you think?”

  Emmet-Tansley tipped up his flask, wiped his mouth, shook his head sadly, sighed.

  “Then I suppose,” he said, “that I shall have to challenge you to a duel. You have your choice of weapons. I advise you not to choose rapiers. I should probably run you through with the first thrust.”

  “I’ll compromise on bare fists,” said Woodring, “or bare facts. What did you want with me, to-night?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Emmet-Tansley’s face registered bland astonishment. “How absent-minded of me. Why, I came to tell you that your pal Tom is still with us.”

  “Tom?” Woodring frowned.

  “Tom the Peeper,” explained Emmet-Tansley. “That chap with the ears and the Germanic haircut that I found peering through your keyhole at the Great Eastern last night. He’s still at it, apparently. He had his eye glued to your shutter at the last station. Of course, this time, Woodring, there was a lady. Nevertheless—”

  “I suppose he’s still outside the compartment, hanging by his eyebrows since the last station?”

  “Not at all, Woodring. Not at all. He’s in the next compartment. By some strange coincidence he’s billeted in with me. Unless, as you say, he’s a hallucination, rather than a coincidence. But you will look at him for me, won’t you, old bean?”

  Woodring hesitated, looked at his watch. It lacked fifteen minutes of midnight. He looked at Ruth Ingram. The twinkle of amusement at Emmet-Tansley’s drunken banter had gone from the girl’s eyes. Her face was anxious, dubious, almost fearful. A negative plea seemed to tremble on her lips.

  “All right, Emmet-Tansley,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Leaving the car, the red-head stumbled on the step. Woodring caught him, steadied him by throwing an arm around his shoulder. He profited by the movement to explore for suspicious bulges in Emmet-Tansley’s coat. Apparently the man was not armed.

  “Right here, old bean,” said the red-head, fumbling with the door of an adjoining compartment. The door swung open. The compartment was dark. “Maybe you’re right, my dear Woodring,” he continued, poking his head into the darkness. “Maybe the chap was a hallucination. I admit I don’t see anything now.”

  Suddenly the compartment was flooded with light and Emmet-Tansley gave a startled bound in reverse against Woodring. Over his shoulder Woodring saw a scrawny little man sitting up in his berth, one hand on the light switch. The man wore a night cap pulled down close to his prominent ears. His round face was contorted by an astigmatic grimace as one hand groped for a pair of thick spectacles. The other dragged a glittering revolver from under his pillow.

  “Who iss it?” he squealed shrilly.

  “Thank heaven! He’s real!” breathed Emmet-Tansley with relief. He clambered into the compartment as he continued: “I say, old man, my friend Woodring, here, has been hinting darkly that you’re nothing but a figment of my distorted imagination …”

  “I am Dr. Adolf Feurmann!”

  “Yes, I know all about that, old man,” said Emmet-Tansley. “But I thought you’d appreciate getting a good look at Mr. Woodring. You’ve been squinting at him through keyholes long enough, so I thought I’d bring you two chaps together for a little mutual scrutiny. What is this game, anyway…?”

  “That man,” exclaimed Feurmann excitedly, leaning forward so that his revolver was aimed at Woodring’s midriff, “iss a spy!”

  “Oh, well, that’s different,” said Emmet-Tansley. “That explains everything. After all, turn about is fair play, and a spy must certainly put up with being spied upon now and again.”

  “He iss a spy,” repeated Feurmann with great vehemence, “for the Gestapo. He iss an agent for the Nazi secret police. He iss sent to persecute me.”

  Woodring listened in amazement and disbelief. He wanted to laugh, yet there was nothing inherently funny about looking into the muzzle of a .45 calibre revolver, wavering in the nervous hands of a frightened man who looked upon him as a mortal enemy. Between the dipsomaniac and the bespectacled madman with delusions of persecution, Woodring found himself distinctly uncomfortable.

  Compressed air sighed as brakes were released. The guard ran past, trying the outside locks. Woodring glanced at the door, then at the revolver in Feurmann’s hand. He was pondering the advisability of allowing himself to remain locked up with these two eccentrics—or pseudo-eccentrics—until the next station. If these men were some of Blenn’s “certain parties,” what could they do? They might try to delay his arrival in Darjeeling, prevent his rendezvous with the Nawab’s agent until after the Shimalghar concession had expired next week. But Woodring doubted that they would succeed. He felt particularly sure of himself to-night.

  They might even try to steal what Basil Stiller had tried to steal, and Stiller’s murderer: the original concession from the Nawab of Shimalghar and the incriminating photograph of the Nawab in Bangkok. But those objects, Woodring was convinced, were safe for the time being. In all likelihod they were travelling by this same train—in the mail van. For Woodring had sealed them in an envelope the night before and posted them in the pillar-box at the Great Eastern—addressed to John Mapleleaf, Himalayan Grand Hotel, Darjeeling.

  The train jolted. The locomotive grunted into motion, crawling slowly from the station, heading northward into the night, north toward the Himalayas.

  For more than an hour the toy train puffed up the steep mountain grade towards Tindharia. For more than an hour the runt locomotive belched great clouds of black smoke that swirled up through the thick forests overhanging the roadbed. The little cars squirmed around dizzy curves, switched back and zigzagged along the precipitous mountainside, far above the plains that lay dreaming below in a yellow haze. At last the engine stopped, panting for water, at Tindharia.

  The fragrance of frying bacon drifted from the station refreshment room to blend with the faint scent of mountain blossoms, the scarlet bouquets of tree-rhododendrons which ragged urchins with dirty Mongoloid faces were trying to sell to hungry passengers. Inspector Prike, apparently, was not hungry, for he did not move from his compartment during the stop. He calmly consumed a Trichinopoly cheroot until Robbins, just before train time, escorted white-haired, stoop-shouldered Stanley Hubertson into the car. The miniature train resumed its climb a few seconds later.

  “Good-morning, inspector,” said Hubertson, adjusting his pince-nez. “Have you summoned me to question me further—or to enlighten me further?” He smiled wanly.

  “Both,” said Inspector Prike curtly. “You said yesterday you were acquainted with a man named Christopher Jericho. I neglected to ask you how well you were acquainted.”

  “Not very well, to tell the truth, inspector,” replied Hubertson in his thin treble. “I was a new man with the Blenn Engineering Works during Mr. Jericho’s last year or two, and that was fifteen years ago.”

  “But you now occupy the same position with Mr. Blenn that Mr. Jericho occupied fifteen years ago—is that correct?”

  “Hardly, inspector,” Hubertson shook his silver shock emphatically. “True, Mr. Jericho was chief engineer, as I am. But in addition to that he was an associate of Mr. Blenn, a partner. He helped found the Blenn Empire.”

  “Where is he now?” snapped Prike.

  Hubertson’s black eyes glittered strangely behind his spectacles.

  “As far as I know,” he said, “Mr. Jericho is still in England.”

  “Why do you qualify your statement: as far as you know?”

  “Because it’s true. Last I heard, Mr. Jericho was in England.”

  “In a nursing home in Thornton Heath?” Inspector Prike’s question had the hard edge of a cold chisel.

  Stanley Hubertson started perceptibly. He removed his pince-nez, began to polish the lenses.

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  “Did you know that Jericho has escaped from the nursing home?”

  Hubertson almost dropped his glasses.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I—I learned he had escaped.”

  “When?”

  “Day before yesterday, I believe it was,” mumbled Hubertson. “Mr. Blenn showed me a cutting from The Times. As a matter of fact, I believe he gave it to me.” Hubertson fumbled in his wallet. “Yes, here it is. ‘Metropolitan police have been asked to …’ ”

  “I’ve read it,” snapped Prike. “When did Mr. Blenn give it to you?”

  “Let me see … Day before yesterday, it must have been. It was the morning that young Woodring arrived. I stopped by Mr. Blenn’s house on a matter of business, and he handed me the cutting. He knew I’d be interested because I was a contemporary of Mr. Jericho.”

  “Then you remember Jericho’s commitment to the asylum?” Prike asked.

  Stanley Hubertson nodded sadly.

  “It was most tragic,” he murmured. “Mr. Blenn and Mr. Jericho had gone home to England together, when Mr. Jericho went stark, staring mad. Mr. Jericho was always a little eccentric, I remember, but he was a genius. This madness must have taken him quite suddenly. He tried to kill Mr. Blenn.”

  “And Jericho was adjudged insane on the basis of this single assault on Blenn?”

  “Oh, no,” said Hubertson. “There were many witnesses, I remember. His landlady testified that he kept a horse in the kitchen of his flat in Brixton. Some one else told of his coming to tea without a shirt on. Then it seems he was given to walking down the street, shouting quotations from the Bible.”

  “Did Basil Stiller know Jericho?”

  “I … don’t … think so,” said Hubertson, slowly. “Although he might have. Mr. Stiller joined the Blenn organisation shortly after I did.”

  “Did you see Christopher Jericho in Calcutta yesterday?” Prike demanded.

  “Good lord, no!” Hubertson’s eyes flashed behind his spectacles. “Is … was he in Calcutta?”

  “I don’t know,” said Inspector Prike. His manner relaxed as he offered Hubertson a cheroot, lit one himself when the engineer refused. “Tell me, Mr. Hubertson, you’ve been associated with Stiller for a long time—why do you think he was killed?”

  Hubertson hesitated. The toy train was grunting around a sharp loop, crossing itself on a stone bridge almost before the last car had passed beneath it.

  “I wish I could answer your question,” he said at last. “But I must admit I am completely mystified. I know that circumstances point to Mr. Blenn, yet I can’t conceive of any reason for Mr. Blenn doing a thing like that.”

  “My colleague, Deputy-Inspector Robbins, who is probably the most uxorious misogynist East of Suez, invariably suspects the malicious influence of some woman in a case like this,” declared Prike with a perfectly straight face. “Do you know, Mr. Hubertson, of any rival for the hand of Miss Ingram who might have profited by Stiller’s death?”

  Hubertson shook his head. “Ruth Ingram is a very attractive girl,” he said. “She undoubtedly had many admirers. But, while I am naturally not familiar with her private life, I doubt that she encouraged any of her unsuccessful suitors sufficiently to inspire murder.” Hubertson paused. Then, noting a peculiarly smug expression on the Deputy-Inspector’s face, he added: “Had you some one in mind, Mr. Robbins?”

  “Paul Woodring.” Robbins announced flatly.

  “Woodring?” Hubertson raised his thin hands a few inches above his knees, in a gesture of surprise. “I think you must be mistaken. Why, Ruth Ingram scarcely knows him.”

 

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