the door, and had been thrown on to the line.
Magnum, moving forward over the roof, in plain view of the others, went to pull up the lamp and demonstrate his point.
But a sentence from the railway official checked him in mid-action.
“You are thinking of the old type of lamp, sir. These ones are not removable. They’re fixtures.”
Magnum, incredulous, went on; found the lamp screwed in tight, and the screws rusted in firmly.
The insurance lawyer permitted himself a dry laugh of cynical amusement.
“Facts,” said he, “have an unfortunate habit of contradicting the most ingenious and elegant theories.”
Magnum was now thoroughly roused by the mocking mystery of the railway compartment. He had, in plain words, made a fool of himself in front of the insurance lawyer. That was unbearable. The only way to get back his self-respect was to wrest out the secret, and flourish it in the lawyer’s face.
Before, Magnum had been only halfheartedly interested in a problem which was somewhat outside his professional line; now, he was resolutely determined to work at it with a red-hot concentration of energies.
Hurrying to New Cross Station with Stacey, he took ticket to Paddock Wood, beyond Tonbridge, where Jonasson had lived his recluse life in a country cottage a couple of miles away from the railway line, alone save for a housekeeper-servant. On the way, Magnum plied Stacey with question after question regarding the life-history, the habits and eccentricities of the dead man. Stacey’s information was limited; the housekeeper could tell much more.
On their arrival, they found the cottage bolted and barred. A hedger and ditcher, working in a neighbouring lane, expressed the thoughtful opinion that the housekeeper must have locked up and gone away. Where? demanded Magnum, assisting his cerebrations with a couple of half-crowns. He didn’t rightly know. Could he find out by asking neighbours? That struck the hedger as an idea of great brilliance, and, dropping his tools, he set off to make inquiries.
Meanwhile, Magnum, impatient of obstacles, broke a window in the cottage, and secured unconventional entrance. With Stacey’s guidance, he went through the dead man’s books and papers and personal possessions in search of a fresh light on the mystery.
Both were now firmly convinced that Jonasson had come to his death by foul play, or, more exactly, that he had been terrified out of the closed railway compartment by some human agency. Both were equally of the opinion that it was a matter of long-standing revenge, reaching back into the obscurities of Jonasson’s past life.
But mere opinions would be poor weapons for a big law-case. They must have
A long search through books, papers, and clothes proved annoyingly inconclusive. Jonasson’s tastes were evidently cultured and leisured. Whatever he might have been in his youth, in the immediate past he had been a trifler with books, garden, and fishing. That gave them no help.
In the bedroom of the dead man, Magnum on a sudden impulse threw up the window. Outside it, he was surprised to find a screen of fine-meshed wire netting.
“Why this?” he asked to Stacey.
“To keep out summer insects, I should imagine.”
Magnum suddenly became very thoughtful, hunching his bushy eyebrows and twisting at his straggly beard.
The hedger and ditcher, beaming with pride at the success of his detective work, came to announce that the housekeeper had gone to visit a married daughter living at Tonbridge.
“We’ll go there at once,” said Magnum; “and the first question to ask her is why Jonasson put up that wire netting.”
Stacey looked at him questioningly.
“The loaded revolver he kept in his bedroom,” pursued Magnum, “is nothing out of the ordinary for a nervous man living in a lonely country cottage. But the wire screen is highly unusual. The unusual is worth analysis.”
An hour later, they were at Tonbridge. Mrs Pritchett was readily found in the parlour above her daughter’s confectionery shop in the High Street – a time-worn, grey-haired, grey-minded woman, resigned to the arrows of misfortune, dull of speech, with that love for irrelevant, side-track detail which goes so often with one of limited interests and narrow outlook. Magnum, with his impatience of slowness, found his temper distinctly tried during his endeavours to get relevant answers to his pointed questions. In essence, her information amounted to this:
Mr Jonasson had had the wire screen fixed up six months previously. He was a very reserved man, liking to give orders without giving reasons. It was in wintertime, so that there was no reason to guard against wasps, gnats, or mosquitoes. No; she had no idea why he wanted it, but he was very concerned about having it put up at once.
“At once?” questioned Magnum, seizing on the suggestiveness of the phrase.
It was directly after he received a visit from the dark gentleman with the gold-rimmed spectacles. High words had passed between them. No; she had no idea who he was. Mr Jonasson was very reserved, keeping his affairs entirely to himself. The dark gentleman was a foreigner – he looked like a half-caste. He was seen in the neighbourhood of Paddock Wood three months later. She believed that this man must have tried to murder Mr Jonasson in the train. She was convinced that he was hiding under the seat of the compartment.
“That has been proved impossible,” put in Stacey.
Mrs Pritchett was of the opinion that nothing was impossible to a foreigner.
Regarding the past life of the dead man, her information was mostly conjecture, embroidered fantastically after the fashion of country gossip. The only definite fact was that he had gone to Africa as a young man. The name “Uganda” persisted in her memory. At one time he had kept souvenirs of Africa in his study, but some years back he had made a clean sweep of them, burning them in a bonfire at the end of the garden.
Letters? When Mr Jonasson received letters, he usually burnt them. No, indeed, she never pried into his private papers! She hoped she knew her place! No; she didn’t listen to the conversation between Mr Jonasson and the foreigner. She couldn’t help hearing that they were angry with one another, but to suggest that she would stoop to listen at a keyhole-
“If you had,” retorted Magnum impatiently, “Mr Jonasson might be alive today.”
Mrs Pritchett relapsed into the easy tears of old age, and it took all Stacey’s efforts to comfort her.
“You’ll be saying next as it was me as murdered him!” she cried accusingly at Magnum.
He offered a sovereign as consolation for wounded feelings, and the interview proceeded. But no further information of importance resulted.
Magnum and Stacey returned to town. The scientist chose an empty second-class compartment of the same type as the mystery carriage, and asked Stacey to leave him there alone during the journey.
At Cannon Street, when Stacey went to rejoin his friend, he found Magnum glowing with excitement.
“I think we’ve got it!” he cried, slapping Stacey on the shoulder with a lusty thump. “First set your detectives on the hunt for that half-caste with the gold-rimmed spectacles.”
“Yes, I’d settled to do that,” returned the young lawyer; “but even if we find him, it doesn’t help much for our side of the case. Assume that he threatened to murder Jonasson-assume that Jonasson was in deadly terror of him-assume that he travelled in the next compartment to Jonasson. Even then the Empire Company would claim that the deceased threw himself out of the train-suicide while temporarily insane, but still
“I believe I can do it,” returned Magnum emphatically. “The phial of atoxyl he carried in his pocket, the book on sleeping sickness, the wire screen to his bedroom window, Uganda the home of the tsetse fly – they fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. One more piece in place, and the whole pattern would stand out. To-morrow we’ll search that sealed compartment once again.”
“In the presence of the Empire’s lawyer?”
“Naturally. Arrange it for the afternoon. And if I can show him that Magnum is not quite the fool he imagines-”
As mentioned before, Magnum was not without a dash of very human vanity.
On the following afternoon, the same four were back in the shed where the mystery carriage stood mutely
