“As soon as the train came out of the tunnel into Sevenoaks Station. The door of Jonasson’s compartment was open, and banging to and fro… All the evidence goes to show that he was entirely alone in the compartment; that he opened the door himself – fingerprints on the handle – and fell out. We claim that he must have become suddenly frightened – he was a nervous old man – and that he lost his head, opened the door to call for help, and was thrown out by the rush of wind against the open door.”
“Sounds very probable.”
“The Empire Company say that if he wanted help he could have pulled the alarm-cord. There was no one else in the compartment – that’s certain from the footprints in the dust. He had nothing to be afraid of, they claim.”
“Equally plausible.”
“Can you tell me why he carried that atoxyl with him?”
Magnum was not a man to confess openly to ignorance. He replied curtly:
“I’m not a theorist. Ask me
For reply, Stacey produced from his pocket a blank manuscript-size envelope, and from the envelope a much- creased sheet of folded paper – blank.
“I found this in Jonasson’s study while hunting for his will. I have a strong feeling that it contains a message written in invisible ink. Miss Gerard tells me that he was the kind of eccentric who would do that. Will you try to get the message out?”
“Suppose,” asked Magnum shrewdly, “it were to say that he intended to commit suicide?”
“In that case,” laughed the lawyer, “I shouldn’t call you as a witness.”
“You young scoundrel!”
“But it won’t do that,” answered Stacey, returning to seriousness. “Miss Gerard knew him well – he was very fond of her in his queer, angular way – and she is perfectly certain that he had no intention of committing suicide.”
“If you prove wrong,” warned Magnum, “don’t count on me to keep silent in a case of fraud.”
He passed the sheet of paper to Meredith, who examined it eagerly, his eyes alight at the thought of pitting his chemical knowledge against the secret of the apparently blank paper.
Meredith’s first move was to cut the sheet into four quarters, so as to avoid the risk of spoiling the whole of it in the course of experimenting.
The heat test gave no result, nor did the iodide test, nor the sulphuretted hydrogen test.
Magnum, suspecting that they were in for a long session, looked at his watch, found it marking seven o’clock and sent out for three porterhouse steaks, a Stilton cheese and bread, and lager beer.
“I should prefer oysters, a fried sole, and a bottle of claret,” suggested Stacey.
“You’ll have what’s good for you,” retorted Magnum, who had un?sthetic views on food.
It was close on nine o’clock before Meredith at length triumphed. Fitting together three-quarters of the sheet of paper – the other quarter had become spoilt in the course of testing – the following wording stood out in roughly written capital letters:
Magnum turned to Stacey.
“There’s your wedding present,” said he grimly.
All Stacey’s pose of flippancy had dropped from him. Staring at the paper, he asked, in a hushed voice:
“What does it mean?”
“A warning,” returned Magnum. “A warning that must have put Jonasson’s nerves on edge. In that railway compartment, alone, passing through the long Sevenoaks tunnel, something happened to terrify him into trying to escape.”
“If we could prove it! But what exactly happened?”
“The last words of the warning were, judging on the first two lines, ‘
“Yes, yes!” cried Stacey eagerly.
“That railway-carriage – of course it’s been sealed and shunted into a siding?”
“Naturally.”
“Tomorrow morning we’ll go and examine it.”
“Yes, but what’s your theory?”
Magnum’s temperament included a strong dash of human vanity. He liked to have his achievements bulk large. He liked to display his results against an effective background. Having arrived at a simple explanation of a puzzling mystery, he preferred to keep silent about it until the morning should bring the glowing moment for the revelation.
Stacey had to be content to wait.
The railway-carriage – possible evidence in a fifty thousand pound law-case – had been shunted into a goods yard of the Chatham and South-Eastern, and housed in a shed under lock and key at the instigation of the insurance company.
A legal representative of the company, as well as a district goods manager of the Chatham and South-Eastern, accompanied Stacey and Magnum to the fresh inspection of it. The insurance lawyer – dry, thin-lipped, pince-nezed, cynically critical, abundantly sure of himself – allowed a ghost of an acidulated smile to flicker around his eyes as he viewed Magnum’s air of expectant triumph. The goods manager preserved an attitude of strict neutrality. Stacey was on a hair-trigger of expectation, masked under a pose of legal dignity and self-restraint.
The railway official broke the seals on the door of the compartment, and threw it open for Magnum’s inspection. The latter’s shrewd eyes darted about the interior, taking in every detail.
To all appearance, it was an entirely ordinary, humdrum, commonplace, second-class compartment, carrying no hint of tragedy. The dead man’s ulster, umbrella, and travelling-bag, replaced on the rack in the position where they had first been found, merely suggested that some traveller had left them there while he went out to buy a journal at a book-stall. A small volume of Lamb’s Essays, lying on a corner seat, might have been put there to secure his place.
Then Magnum asked to see the two adjoining compartments – one a smoker, one a general compartment. They were bare of extraneous objects and entirely unsuggestive.
“Well?” challenged the opposing lawyer, with his thin and acid smile. “Have you discovered some point we all have been dense enough to miss?”
“There are always two sides to every question,” returned Magnum.
“Your side and my side?”
“The inside and the outside,” amended Magnum, with a cutting edge to his words.
“And the application of that very sound maxim?”
“The application is that to view the outside one needs a ladder.”
“And why a ladder, may I ask?”
“I am not a ‘Child’s Guide to Knowledge,’ but if you are seriously anxious for an answer to your question, it is in order to climb.” Having delivered this snub, Magnum turned, and addressed himself to the goods manager: “Please send for a short ladder, so that I can examine the roof.”
When it arrived, Magnum mounted briskly to the roof of the carriage, and looked for the footprints or traces of a man having crawled over the roof, which he confidently expected to find. A grievous disappointment awaited him. The roof was streaked with raindrops trickling over soot, now dried into the semblance of a map of some fantastic mountain range. There were no footprints.
“Did it rain on the day of the accident?” he asked sharply.
Stacey, after a moment’s thought, replied in the affirmative.
“Unfortunate,” commented Magnum. “Rain would have obliterated footprints. Come up here.”
At last Stacey understood what Magnum was driving at. “
