The clock above the entrance of the station showed it to be exactly five o’clock. The Reading passenger glanced at it, walked swiftly a few yards westward up Praed Street, then, seizing his opportunity, crossed the road again. This brought him to the slope leading to the departure platform of Paddington station. He hurried through the booking office on to No. 1 platform, at which stood the 5:50 train for Bristol, which stops for the first time at Reading. He showed the ticket collector a third-class single ticket for Reading, and the man hastily opened a carriage door and pushed him in. “Near shave that, sir!” he remarked.
The passenger was far too short of breath to do anything but nod his head in reply. He sank down exhausted upon the seat as the guard blew his whistle and the train drew out of the station. There were only two men beside himself in the carriage, and they, with true British indifference, took no further notice of him. The train had nearly reached Reading when he walked down the corridor to the lavatory. He did not return to the carriage, but stepped straight from the corridor to the platform as the train came to rest. He mingled unnoticed with the stream passing the barriers. He noticed that the hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes to six.
Meanwhile Mr. Pargent had stood for an instant upon the refuge in the middle of Praed Street, a puzzled expression on his face. An approaching taxi-driver noticed his swaying form and swerved sharply, just in time to avoid him as he crashed forward into the roadway. The taxi-driver’s action caused a sudden check to the traffic, and for an instant there was a chaos of skidding vehicles, screeching brakes, and blasphemous language. Then the nearest drivers jumped from their seats and clustered round the prone form. A majestic policeman, setting a calm and undeviating course through the tumult, knelt down and turned the body over. Mr. Pargent was dead.
The newspaper which Mr. Ludgrove bought at Wokingham station and read carefully during his journey to Waterloo contained nothing more than a bare statement that the famous poet, Richard Pargent, had fallen dead in Praed Street, and that, upon the body being conveyed to the mortuary, a blade was found in it, with the point entering the heart. Round these facts a formidable structure of conjecture and reminiscence was built up. There was an obituary notice, in which Mr. Pargent’s Christian names and the titles of his published works were incorrectly stated. There was a résumé of the case of Mr. Tovey, and a photograph of Praed Street, with heavy black crosses marking the places where the murders had taken place. Finally there was a leading article, in which the responsibility for the murders was ingeniously fixed upon the Government, which in consequence came in for severe criticism. In fact, the murder of Mr. Pargent was evidently the topic of the day.
Mr. Ludgrove sat with his haversack beside him on the carriage seat, even his beloved plants unheeded. He read every bit of the paper over and over again, seeking for some clue which might account for the crime. The description ended with the words “the police are, however, in possession of a clue, the nature of which they are not at present prepared to divulge, but which, they are confident, will lead to startling developments in the near future.” Mr. Ludgrove smiled rather cynically as he read them. They seemed to him to have a somewhat familiar ring.
He had the paper in his hand as he walked into Mr. Copperdock’s shop to get his key, and his friend caught sight of it. “So you’ve seen the news, then?” he said excitedly.
Mr. Ludgrove nodded gravely. “I have been reading the account as I came up in the train,” he replied.
“We didn’t know a thing about it till eight o’clock on Saturday evening,” continued Mr. Copperdock eagerly. “I was just going across to the Cambridge Arms when Inspector Whyland came in and asked me casual-like what I’d been doing all the afternoon. As a matter of fact neither Ted nor I had hardly left the shop, and so I told him. It wasn’t till then that he let on that three hours before a gentleman had been murdered not a hundred yards away, exactly the same as poor Tovey. Then I remembered that a customer had told me something about an accident outside Paddington station, but, being busy, I hadn’t taken any heed of it. And, that reminds me, the Inspector left a message for you, asking if you would let him know when you got back. I’ll ring him up from here if you like, I’ve got his number.”
“I wish you would, I have no telephone, as you know,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “Has Mrs. Cooper brought my key back yet?”
Mr. Copperdock felt in his pocket and handed the herbalist a Yale key. “She brought it in ten minutes ago. She was terribly upset, and talked about our all being murdered in our beds next. It’s a terrible thing to have happened just before Christmas like this. People will be afraid to go out of doors after dark.”
Mr. Ludgrove nodded rather absently, and took the key which his friend offered him. “You’ll let Inspector Whyland know I’m back?” he said, and, without awaiting Mr. Copperdock’s reply, he left the shop, crossed the road, and entered his own premises, a thoughtful frown upon his face.
Inspector Whyland lost no time in acting upon Mr. Copperdock’s message. The murder of Mr. Richard Pargent, following so soon upon that of Mr. Tovey, and perpetrated by the same method, had made a great sensation, not only among
