Stiffly he pointed to the black bag on the rack.
'You have denied my allegations, sir,' he said. 'Well, prove it. Open that bag.'
CHAPTER TEN
The Flying Corpse
This was getting tolerably bad. Everywhere I turned that night, there seemed to be clink at the end of it. The ticket-collector, still silent, turned on me his sad and gloomy expression, giving a curious grunt with a rising inflection.
'No, sir,' I said. 'I most certainly will not open that bag.’
'You will not open the bag,' stated the other formally, and folded his arms again. 'And why won't you open the bag, sir, may I ask? Why won't you open the bag?'
'Because it's not mine.'
This took him under the ear, but it confirmed his suspicions. He whirred in his throat, looked grimly at the ticket-collector, and regarded me with a terrible smile. He wasn't a bad old boy, and it must have made him furious to see such goings-on in canonicals, so there was good excuse for his accusation.
'You deny,' he said, 'you deny that you brought a bag in here?'
'No, I don't. But it wasn't that one. My bag is there.'
Now it was time to bless Charters's thoroughness in sending me some wearing apparel. I pointed to the valise Evelyn had brought.
'I might have anticipated this, indeed,' declared my friend, wagging his head. 'Is there any use of his pretending further? I myself can give testimony that the bag he indicates was brought into this compartment by that young lady herself.'
Evelyn, her eyes beaming, reached up and took it down. 'Open it,' she said to the ticket-collector, sweetly.
That functionary, delving deep, produced a tweed suit — clearly Charters's — a pair of pyjamas, a straight- bladed razor, a shaving-brush, and a stick of shaving-soap; and by this time the ticket-collector was turning a very sour eye on a furious clergyman. Then he broke his oracular silence at last.
'Ye'll no' maintain,' be said, 'that this belongs to the young lady, will ye? For mysel', I'll no judge ye; but, if ye maun hae my opeenion, sin, ye're as daft as auld Jamie.'
'Crazy as a bed-bug, agreed Stone. 'Or drunk.'
'Ay,' agreed the other. He took up the coat, and examined the tailor's label with a sinister squint. 'You, sir you'll no' mind givin' your name, now?'
'Martin Charters,' I said, and Stone shut his eyes.
The ticket-collector examined the label, nodded in satisfaction, and grunted. Then he looked at the black bag on the rack. 'Ay. But that —?'
Evelyn pointed dramatically at my antagonist, and entered flushed into the battle. 'It's his,' she declared. 'I saw him bring it in. But I don't think he's drunk, really. I think it's all a part of a nasty, clever plot to throw suspicion on the Rev. Mr. Charters while he gets away: that's what I think! Why should he talk about somebody being a criminal, unless he's one himself? And as for casting those nasty aspersions on my virtue… he says I went out of the compartment. Well, I did! Do you know why?'
'Eh?'
'He made indecent proposals to me,' said Evelyn, and her eyes filled with tears.
My antagonist went the colour of an oak-leaf in autumn.
'This is really intolerable,' he said breathlessly. 'For sheer matchless impudence, this is beyond any contingency I could ever have suspected or conceived of. I shall be happy to prove my identity and my good character by the testimony of any of those who travelled with me in the liner. I–I ' He was so furious that he gibbered. 'I have been for twenty-two years rector of St. Josephus's Church of Toronto-'
'So he's escaping,' said Evelyn, folding her own arms and nodding in an ominous way. 'He's running away. If you examine that black bag of his, I'll just bet you find a forged passport, or disguises and things, and maybe a steamship ticket to somewhere in the wilds '
The ticket-collector reached up and yanked down the black bag. And that was how we came at last to discover what Mr. Joseph Serpos had really stolen.
The bag was resting in the hollow of the cloth netting, well down against the bar which prevents luggage from sliding out. It is conceivable that the lower part of the bag, with the metal studs along the edgings at the bottom, caught against the bar when the valise was pulled out. I am not certain precisely what happened. But, as the ticket-collector jumped back, about two inches of the bottom of the bag flew loose on a hinge: and in the next instant the whole compartment was showered with paper money.
To my dazed wits it seemed that, outside a bank, I had never seen so much money in my life. Through the partly open window of the compartment a strong breeze was blowing, and the cloud of currency whirled and circled round our heads. Some of it was loose, some of it in packets. There were batches of five-pound, ten-pound and even fifty-pound notes; including some packets of pound and ten-shilling notes. We did not stop to think. We pounced after it instinctively, to gather it up before it should be blown wide out of the window or into the corridor. Stone dived to pull up the strap and shut the window, losing his hat outside in the confusion. But even in the confusion, I am glad to say, I remembered my impoverished state well enough to thrust a packet of ten-shilling notes into my pocket. We gathered it up as well as we could. The ticket-collector stood back, breathing hard, and eyed the rector of St. Josephus's with malevolence.
'Hauld the skellum,' he said briefly, 'while I get help. Bristol in five minutes.'
We seemed to be flying even faster now, the train swaying and plunging. In pale dignity the rector sat down and gibbered. His eloquence in his own defence so choked him that no coherent word slipped out. I tried to talk to him, explaining that things would be all right presently; but he called me thief and swindler in such blood-curdling if unprofane fashion, and threatened with such firmness to consecrate his life to putting all of us behind bars, that I presently left off. After all, he had only done his duty in denouncing me; but I did not mean to fall foul of the police after all the events of that night.
The ticket-collector returned with two other officials just as we were rolling into Temple Meads station at Bristol. There were not many people, except porters, on the big platform at that hour of the morning. But one of the ticket-collector's companions, after grimly surveying the heap of money, put his face against the window and pointed. He was indicating a stocky man in a bowler hat, whose figure swept past as the man in the bowler hat tried to hurry towards the front of the train.
'I know that chap,' was the comfortless news. 'He's from the police department — Inspector Somebody. By George, they've tumbled to it! They probably know this fellow's on the train, and they're here to arrest — '
'Duck,' I said to Evelyn, and reached up after Charters's bag on the rack. 'As soon as we stop, duck!'
The man in the bowler hat had already raised his arm and made a gesture towards our compartment. One of the officials had let down a window with a bang, and was leaning out to shout along the platform.
'I'll get the inspector,' I said. 'We're witnesses, you know.'
I opened the door, and bumped out into a concealing screen of porters. The bag I pulled after me with one hand, and Evelyn with the other. The man in the bowler hat was a little way down the platform. I could have sworn he saw me face to face, and they must have received my description by this time. Yet he was marching towards that compartment without even glancing at me, though for a moment Evelyn and I were full under the light of the platform lamps. Why he paid no attention I was not to learn (with profanity) until later. We turned round a bookstall, and made for the stairs leading down into the tunnel under the vast stretch of Temple Meads. Even when we emerged into the station on the other side, there was still no sign of pursuit. We looked at each other. Evelyn seemed a trifle dazed.
'He looked at us;' she said in an awed voice. 'He looked right at you, the police-inspector did, and he didn't even notice. There's nobody following us now. It isn't right. How do you explain it?'
I admitted that I was past explaining anything in this mix-up. 'Except that Serpos made a real haul and didn't get away with it. Serpos's behaviour is even more obscure. There must have been eight or ten thousand pounds in
