between his hands came a rambling monologue.
'Damn them. Damn them. I thought the police were fools. I knew the police were fools. That's what h-hurts. I always said that a clever man — It wasn't the Antrim woman, either. If I hadn't wasted all that time, if I'd gone right away, instead of hiding that car, and s-spending three hours laying a false trail'
I felt rather sorry for him, and anyhow, I had the swag safe enough in the black bag. 'Do you hear?' I said. 'I'm letting you go. Get out, can't you?'
He rolled up a white wet face, earnest in its great spectacles. A whole fusillade of slamming doors ran along the line of the train.
'No,' he said, 'no, I'll take my medicine. I'll go back with you. Then maybe'
He rolled up his head again, for a flash I could have sworn I saw a crafty look in that glazed brown eye; something shrewd and fighting behind his limp manner. It occurred to me that this pose of repentance was much overdone. If at that moment I had interpreted the look in his eye, I might have had the key to the whole murder- case. But his thoughts appeared to go back on something I had said, and quite suddenly his face grew less muddled, and, it had a shine like pale butter.
Then he got up. '
'I see,' he said softly. 'You want me to run away, do you? You never came from the police. You never came from Charters or Merrivale. I know where you come from. And you know all about it. Yes, I think I shall get away after all. Now, my friend, hand me back that bag. If you don't, I'll set up an alarm and bring the whole place down on us… and you'll have to prove who you are.'
Whr-e-e-e went the guard's whistle outside.
At our left there was a door labelled `Gentlemen.' Serpos, I think, was too stunned to resist or even cry out, for I dropped the bag on the floor and hustled him through that door. Inside there were several cubicles with doors stretching from the floor nearly to the roof. A good heave shot him through into one of them, and I closed the door on him. Above the handle there was a little nickelled dial round which ran the polite inscription, `Occupied' or `Vacant.' That dial must turn in order to let the handle turn and let anybody out. I took my halfpenny and wedged it down into the dial against `Occupied,' so that the handle could not be turned from inside.
His howl rose up, followed by a furious bang on the door, just as I slipped out into the waiting-room, picked up the bag, and made with no great haste for the train. The dim platform was now deserted; it had closed up, like a theatre, at the end of our disturbance. Although the train was in motion, it was gliding slowly. I wanted to let most of those flashing windows roll past and get into a carriage near the end, so that my arrival should not be noticed.
But even a second's delay was too long. In the last carriage of the train I spotted an empty first-class compartment. I pulled open the door, and was running along beside it to get purchase for a jump inside, when there was a shout from inside the waiting-room. Out of the door popped a little man in shirt-sleeves, with a green shade over his eyes. And at the same time my friend the station-master came hurrying round the corner. The man with the green shade howled at him.
'Sir,' he said, 'there's a clergyman shut up in the lavatory using the most 'orrible language that — '
The rest of it was lost in the slam of the compartment door when I jumped inside, and in the deepening rattle and click of the wheels. We were flying past an anaemic gas-lamp: I could not tell whether they had seen me. But, as we swept out of the station, I took off my helmet and poked my head round the edge of the door to risk a backward look. They did not seem to be much excited. Nevertheless, I saw the station-master pointing to the room which housed the telegraph-office.
If they had seen me, they could telegraph or telephone ahead and get me without fuss. Even if they had not, I was sick as a dog of this infernal masquerading as a policeman; I wanted to get into decent clothes again. It was absolutely necessary to get rid of the policeman's outfit: if anyone on this train saw me, and the alarm was later flashed through, it would be all up. Evelyn was bringing me a spare coat, and Evelyn was somewhere on this train. But I could not go scouting through the train in this rig to look for her..
Serpos's valise, of course. It would probably contain a change of clothes. Momentarily the thought occurred to me that it might contain only another clerical disguise: a prospect so hideous as to make me physically queasy in the stomach. But that did not matter, for a clerical outfit meant merely a black coat, and black coats look much alike, and I was already wearing an ordinary dark blue suit.
This was so much of a relief that I flopped down on the grey upholstery and sat for a moment pleasurably getting my breath. All the same, it would not do to stay here. Somebody might look in at any minute. A lavatory was indicated, to get rid of the Compleat Policeman. Also, I was fiery with curiosity to look into the bag and see what the devil it was that Serpos had stolen. That will-o'-the-wisp had danced in front of me all night, and I meant to settle its hash now.
I opened the corridor-door and peered out. It was deserted. The train moved now with a dancing sway, jerking and whirling above a clackety-roar of the wheels, and a long blast from the whistle was torn behind as we gathered speed. She was a flyer. Bristol, so far as I could remember, must be something less than eighty miles away. Less than an hour and a half should get us there — for another spot of burglary.
Nil desperandum. The Compleat Policeman tiptoed the few remaining feet which separated this compartment from the lavatory, and got safely inside with the door latched. Then I set to work on the valise. It was an ordinary black-leather one, new and shining, and it was not locked. I opened it, and in a minute more I was frantically throwing things aside, digging into it, turning it upside down, without result.
Serpos had done me. That weedy, weepy, blue-chinned young man in spectacles, with the odd gleam in his eye, had somehow hoaxed us all at last. For there was no loot of any kind in the bag. Except for some spare clothing, a few toilet necessities, a book, a passport and a steamship ticket, it was as empty as a real clergyman's.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Six Feet of Earth
Outside the blast of the whistle rose mockingly, and through the half-open window you could hear a deeper clackety-roar of the wheels. I balanced myself against the wall, attempting to read sense into Mr. Joseph Serpos's conduct.
What most struck me was the realization of how consummate an artist this young man had been. There was another clerical outfit in the bag: naturally, since he had a steamship ticket and would have to stand a customs inspection somewhere: there was no other sort of garb at all. Even the book was a devotional work called Sermons from a Sussex Parish. Now, all the clergymen I have ever known have been thoroughly good fellows, the sort who were as much interested in sport as in anything else, and with whom you could sit up all night yarning over a pipe and glass without thinking of them as parsons. But Serpos had chosen to get himself up like a comic-opera vicar, and he had got himself up well. The passport was made out in the name of the Rev. Mr. Thomas Caulderon, The Vicarage, Grayling Dene, Somerset, and 'missionary work' was noted on it. His ticket was taken by the cargo-and- passenger-boat Northern Sultan, sailing on Wednesday, June 17th, from Tilbury Docks to Odessa.
This man was not as young, either in age or in experience, as he looked. The photograph on the passport was his own, showing him with lank black hair cut straight across his forehead, and an expression of piety which seemed to be mocking me: even the government-seal looked genuine. If he was such a thorough-paced artist as this, why had he burst out in fear and blubbering when he was accosted at the station? — and then, afterwards, why had he slipped into that amazing change of cunning behind the sallow face? This man was as big a puzzle as Hogenauer himself. Somehow, I felt, there was one little fact which in about half a dozen words could explain all the vast incongruities of this case, if we could find it; but that fact had slipped round the corner as neatly as Mr. Serpos.
Again this theorizing would not do. I must hurry up and get into the black coat so that I could go to find Evelyn. Whereupon, after examining each of the articles of clothing to make sure nothing was hidden, I discovered the next item of cussedness. There was a black coat, all right. But it was a damned long thin morning-coat, with a tail.
I tried it on, and the effect was so awful that I took it off again. Whereas my arms stuck two inches out of