Tales of Terror and Mystery
The probability was that Caratal had taken him into his counsel, and
that to remove Caratal without removing Gomez would be a mere waste of
energy. It was necessary that they should be involved in a common
fate, and our plans to that end were much facilitated by their request
for a special train. On that special train you will understand that
two out of the three servants of the company were really in our employ,
at a price which would make them independent for a lifetime. I do not
go so far as to say that the English are more honest than any other
nation, but I have found them more expensive to buy.
"I have already spoken of my English agent--who is a man with a
considerable future before him, unless some complaint of the throat
carries him off before his time. He had charge of all arrangements at
Liverpool, whilst I was stationed at the inn at Kenyon, where I awaited
a cipher signal to act. When the special was arranged for, my agent
instantly telegraphed to me and warned me how soon I should have
everything ready. He himself under the name of Horace Moore applied
immediately for a special also, in the hope that he would be sent down
with Monsieur Caratal, which might under certain circumstances have
been helpful to us. If, for example, our great coup had failed, it
would then have become the duty of my agent to have shot them both and
destroyed their papers. Caratal was on his guard, however, and refused
to admit any other traveller. My agent then left the station, returned
by another entrance, entered the guard's van on the side farthest from
the platform, and travelled down with McPherson the guard.
"In the meantime you will be interested to know what my movements were.
Everything had been prepared for days before, and only the finishing
touches were needed. The side line which we had chosen had once joined
the main line, but it had been disconnected. We had only to replace a
few rails to connect it once more. These rails had been laid down as
far as could be done without danger of attracting attention, and now it
was merely a case of completing a juncture with the line, and arranging
the points as they had been before. The sleepers had never been
removed, and the rails, fish-plates and rivets were all ready, for we
had taken them from a siding on the abandoned portion of the line.
With my small but competent band of workers, we had everything ready
long before the special arrived. When it did arrive, it ran off upon
the small side line so easily that the jolting of the points appears to
have been entirely unnoticed by the two travellers.
"Our plan had been that Smith, the stoker, should chloroform John
Slater, the driver, so that he should vanish with the others. In this
respect, and in this respect only, our plans miscarried--I except the
criminal folly of McPherson in writing home to his wife. Our stoker did
his business so clumsily that Slater in his struggles fell off the
engine, and though fortune was with us so far that he broke his neck in
the fall, still he remained as a blot upon that which would otherwise
have been one of those complete masterpieces which are only to be
contemplated in silent admiration. The criminal expert will find in
John Slater the one flaw in all our admirable combinations. A man who
has had as many triumphs as I can afford to be frank, and I therefore
lay my finger upon John Slater, and I proclaim him to be a flaw.
"But now I have got our special train upon the small line two
kilometres, or rather more than one mile, in length, which leads, or
rather used to lead, to the abandoned Heartsease mine, once one of the
largest coal mines in England. You will ask how it is that no one saw
the train upon this unused line. I answer that along its entire length
it runs through a deep cutting, and that, unless someone had been on
the edge of that cutting, he could not have seen it. There WAS someone
on the edge of that cutting. I was there. And now I will tell you
what I saw.
"My assistant had remained at the points in order that he might
superintend the switching off of the train. He had four armed men with
him, so that if the train ran off the line--we thought it probable,
because the points were very rusty--we might still have resources to
fall back upon. Having once seen it safely on the side line, he handed
over the responsibility to me. I was waiting at a point which
overlooks the mouth of the mine, and I was also armed, as were my two
companions. Come what might, you see, I was always ready.
"The moment that the train was fairly on the side line, Smith, the
stoker, slowed-down the engine, and then, having turned it on to the
fullest speed again, he and McPherson, with my English lieutenant,
sprang off before it was too late. It may be that it was this
slowing-down which first attracted the attention of the travellers, but
the train was running at full speed again before their heads appeared
at the open window. It makes me smile to think how bewildered they
must have been. Picture to yourself your own feelings if, on looking
out of your luxurious carriage, you suddenly perceived that the lines
upon which you ran were rusted and corroded, red and yellow with disuse
and decay! What a catch must have come in their breath as in a second
it flashed upon them that it was not Manchester but Death which was
waiting for them at the end of that sinister line. But the train was
running with frantic speed, rolling and rocking over the rotten line,
while the wheels made a frightful screaming sound upon the rusted
surface. I was close to them, and could see their faces. Caratal was
praying, I think--there was something like a rosary dangling out of his
hand. The other roared like a bull who smells the blood of the
slaughter-house. He saw us standing on the bank, and he beckoned to us
like a madman. Then he tore at his wrist and threw his dispatch-box
out of the window in our direction. Of course, his meaning was
obvious. Here was the evidence, and they would promise to be silent if
their lives were spared. It would have been very agreeable if we could
have done so, but business is business. Besides, the train was now as
much beyond our controls as theirs.
"He ceased howling when the train rattled round the curve and they saw
the black mouth of the mine yawning before them. We had removed the
boards which had covered it, and we had cleared the square entrance.
The rails had formerly run very close to the shaft for the convenience
of loading the coal, and we had only to add two or three lengths of
rail in order to lead to the very brink of the shaft. In fact, as the
lengths would not quite fit, our line projected about three feet over
the edge. We saw the two heads at the window: Caratal below, Gomez
above; but they had both been struck silent by what they saw. And yet
they could not withdraw their heads. The sight seemed to have
paralysed them.
"I had wondered how the train running at a great speed would take the
pit into which I had guided it, and I was much interested in watching
it. One of my colleagues thought that it would actually jump it, and
indeed it was not very far from doing so. Fortunately, however, it fell
short, and the buffers of the engine struck the other lip of the shaft
with a tremendous crash. The funnel flew off into the air. The
tender, carriages, and van were all smashed up into one jumble, which,
with the remains of the engine, choked for a minute or so the mouth of
the pit. Then something gave way in the middle, and the whole mass of
green iron, smoking coals, brass fittings, wheels, wood-work, and
cushions all crumbled together and crashed down into the mine. We
heard the rattle, rattle, rattle, as the debris struck against the
walls, and then, quite a long time afterwards, there came a deep roar
as the remains of the train struck the bottom. The boiler may have
burst, for a sharp crash came after the roar, and then a dense cloud of
steam and smoke swirled up out of the black depths, falling in a spray
as thick as rain all round us. Then the vapour shredded off into thin
wisps, which floated away in the summer sunshine, and all was quiet
again in the Heartsease mine.
"And now, having carried out our plans so successfully, it only
remained to leave no trace behind us. Our little band of workers at
the other end had already ripped up the rails and disconnected the side
line, replacing everything as it had been before. We were equally busy
at the mine. The funnel and other fragments were thrown in, the shaft
was planked over as it used to be, and the lines which led to it were
torn up and taken away. Then, without flurry, but without delay, we
all made our way out of the country, most of us to Paris, my English
colleague to Manchester, and McPherson to Southampton, whence he
emigrated to America. Let the English papers of that date tell how
throughly we had done our work, and how completely we had thrown the
cleverest of their detectives off our track.
"You will remember that Gomez threw his bag of papers out of the
window, and I need not say that I secured that bag and brought them to
my employers. It may interest my employers now, however, to learn that
out of that bag I took one or two little papers as a souvenir of the
occasion. I have no wish to publish these papers; but, still, it is
every man for himself in this world, and what else can I do if my
friends will not come to my aid when I want them? Messieurs, you may
believe that Herbert de Lernac is quite as formidable when he is
against you as when he is with you, and that he is not a man to go to
the guillotine until he has seen that every one of you is en route for
New Caledonia. For your own sake, if not for mine, make haste,
Monsieur de ----, and General ----, and Baron ---- (you can fill up the
blanks for yourselves as you read this). I promise you that in the
next edition there will be no blanks to fill.
"P.S.--As I look over my statement there is only one omission which I
can see. It concerns the unfortunate man McPherson, who was foolish
enough to write to his wife and to make an appointment with her in New
York. It can be imagined that when interests like ours were at stake,
we could not leave them to the chance of whether a man in that class of
life would or would not give away his secrets to a woman. Having once
broken his oath by writing to his wife, we could not trust him any
more. We took steps therefore to insure that he should not see his
wife. I have sometimes thought that it would be a kindness to write to
her and to assure her that there is no impediment to her marrying
again."
The Beetle-Hunter
A curious experience? said the Doctor. Yes, my friends, I have had one
very curious experience. I never expect to have another, for it is
against all doctrines of chances that two such events would befall any
one man in a single lifetime. You may believe me or not, but the thing
happened exactly as I tell it.
I had just become a medical man, but I had not started in practice, and
I lived in rooms in Gower Street. The street has been renumbered since
then, but it was in the only house which has a bow-window, upon the
left-hand side as you go down from the Metropolitan Station. A widow
named Murchison kept the house at that time, and she had three medical
students and one engineer as lodgers. I occupied the top room, which
was the cheapest, but cheap as it was it was more than I could afford.
My small resources were dwindling away, and every week it became more
necessary that I should find something to do. Yet I was very unwilling
to go into general practice, for my tastes were all in the direction of
science, and especially of zoology, towards which I had always a strong