Various - Stories of Mystery

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"By no means. I had a fellow-traveller as far as Blackwater, and it
was in trying to restore him the cigar-case which he had dropped in
the carriage that I so nearly let you go on without me."

"I remember your saying something about a cigar-case, certainly,"
replied the guard, "but--"

"You asked for my ticket just before we entered the station."

"I did, sir."

"Then you must have seen him. He sat in the corner next the very door
to which you came."

"No, indeed. I saw no one."

I looked at Jelf. I began to think the guard was in the ex-director's
confidence, and paid for his silence.

"If I had seen another traveller I should have asked for his ticket,"
added Somers. "Did you see me ask for his ticket, sir?"

"I observed that you did not ask for it, but he explained that by
saying--" I hesitated. I feared I might be telling too much, and so
broke off abruptly.

The guard and the station-master exchanged glances. The former looked
impatiently at his watch.

"I am obliged to go on in four minutes more, sir," he said.

"One last question, then," interposed Jelf, with a sort of desperation.
"If this gentleman's fellow-traveller had been Mr. John Dwerrihouse,
and he had been sitting in the corner next the door by which you took
the tickets, could you have failed to see and recognize him?"

"No, sir; it would have been quite impossible."

"And you are certain you did _not_ see him?"

"As I said before, sir, I could take my oath I did not see him. And
if it wasn't that I don't like to contradict a gentleman, I would say
I could also take my oath that this gentleman was quite alone in the
carriage the whole way from London to Clayborough. Why, sir," he added,
dropping his voice so as to be inaudible to the station-master, who
had been called away to speak to some person close by, "you expressly
asked me to give you a compartment to yourself, and I did so. I locked
you in, and you were so good as to give me something for myself."

"Yes; but Mr. Dwerrihouse had a key of his own."

"I never saw him, sir; I saw no one in that compartment but yourself.
Beg pardon, sir, my time's up."

And with this the ruddy guard touched his cap and was gone. In another
minute the heavy panting of the engine began afresh, and the train
glided slowly out of the station.

We looked at each other for some moments in silence. I was the first
to speak.

"Mr. Benjamin Somers knows more than he chooses to tell," I said.

"Humph! do you think so?"

"It must be. He could not have come to the door without seeing him.
It's impossible."

"There is one thing not impossible, my dear fellow."

"What is that?"

"That you may have fallen asleep, and dreamt the whole thing."

"Could I dream of a branch line that I had never heard of? Could I dream
of a hundred and one business details that had no kind of interest for
me? Could I dream of the seventy-five thousand pounds?"

"Perhaps you might have seen or heard some vague account of the affair
while you were abroad. It might have made no impression upon you at
the time, and might have come back to you in your dreams,--recalled,
perhaps, by the mere names of the stations on the line."

"What about the fire in the chimney of the blue room,--should I have
heard of that during my journey?"

"Well, no; I admit there is a difficulty about that point."

"And what about the cigar-case?"

"Ay, by Jove! there is the cigar-case. That _is_ a stubborn fact. Well,
it's a mysterious affair, and it will need a better detective than
myself, I fancy, to clear it up. I suppose we may as well go home."

III.

A week had not gone by when I received a letter from the Secretary of
the East Anglian Railway Company, requesting the favor of my attendance
at a special board meeting, not then many days distant. No reasons were
alleged, and no apologies offered, for this demand upon my time; but
they had heard, it was clear, of my inquiries anent the missing director,
and had a mind to put me through some sort of official examination upon
the subject. Being still a guest at Dumbleton Hall, I had to go up to
London for the purpose, and Jonathan Jelf accompanied me. I found the
direction of the Great East Anglian line represented by a party of some
twelve or fourteen gentlemen seated in solemn conclave round a huge
green-baize table, in a gloomy board-room, adjoining the London
terminus.

Being courteously received by the chairman (who at once began by saying
that certain statements of mine respecting Mr. John Dwerrihouse had
come to the knowledge of the direction, and that they in consequence
desired to confer with me on those points), we were placed at the table,
and the inquiry proceeded in due form.

I was first asked if I knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse, how long I had been
acquainted with him, and whether I could identify him at sight. I was
then asked when I had seen him last. To which I replied, "On the fourth
of this present month, December, eighteen hundred and fifty-six." Then
came the inquiry of where I had seen him on that fourth day of December;
to which I replied that I met him in a first-class compartment of the
4.15 down express; that he got in just as the train was leaving the
London terminus, and that he alighted at Blackwater station. The
chairman then inquired whether I had held any communication with my
fellow-traveller; whereupon I related, as nearly as I could remember
it, the whole bulk and substance of Mr. John Dwerrihouse's diffuse
information respecting the new branch line.

To all this the board listened with profound attention, while the
chairman presided and the secretary took notes. I then produced the
cigar-case. It was passed from hand to hand, and recognized by all.
There was not a man present who did not remember that plain cigar-case
with its silver monogram, or to whom it seemed anything less than
entirely corroborative of my evidence. When at length I had told all
that I had to tell, the chairman whispered something to the secretary;
the secretary touched a silver hand-bell; and the guard, Benjamin
Somers, was ushered into the room. He was then examined as carefully
as myself. He declared that he knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse perfectly
well; that he could not be mistaken in him; that he remembered going
down with the 4.15 express on the afternoon in question; that he
remembered me; and that, there being one or two empty first-class
compartments on that especial afternoon, he had, in compliance with
my request, placed me in a carriage by myself. He was positive that
I remained alone in that compartment all the way from London to
Clayborough. He was ready to take his oath that Mr. Dwerrihouse was
neither in that carriage with me, nor in any compartment of that train.
He remembered distinctly to have examined my ticket at Blackwater; was
certain that there was no one else at that time in the carriage; could
not have failed to observe a second person, if there had been one; had
that second person been Mr. John Dwerrihouse, should have quietly
double-locked the door of the carriage, and have at once given
information to the Blackwater station-master. So clear, so decisive,
so ready, was Somers with this testimony, that the board looked fairly
puzzled.

"You hear this person's statement, Mr. Langford," said the chairman.
"It contradicts yours in every particular. What have you to say in
reply?"

"I can only repeat what I said before. I am quite as positive of the
truth of my own assertions as Mr. Somers can be of the truth of his."

"You say that Mr. Dwerrihouse alighted at Blackwater, and that he was
in possession of a private key. Are you sure that he had not alighted
by means of that key before the guard came round for the tickets?"

"I am quite positive that he did not leave the carriage till the train
had fairly entered the station, and the other Blackwater passengers
alighted. I even saw that he was met there by a friend."

"Indeed! Did you see that person distinctly?"

"Quite distinctly."

"Can you describe his appearance?"

"I think so. He was short and very slight, sandy-haired, with a bushy
mustache and beard, and he wore a closely fitting suit of gray tweed.
His age I should take to be about thirty-eight or forty."

"Did Mr. Dwerrihouse leave the station in this person's company?"

"I cannot tell. I saw them walking together down the platform, and then
I saw them standing aside under a gas-jet, talking earnestly. After
that I lost sight of them quite suddenly; and just then my train went
on, and I with it."

The chairman and secretary conferred together in an undertone. The
directors whispered to each other. One or two looked suspiciously at
the guard. I could see that my evidence remained unshaken, and that,
like myself, they suspected some complicity between the guard and the
defaulter.

"How far did you conduct that 4.15 express on the day in question,
Somers?" asked the chairman.

"All through, sir," replied the guard; "from London to Crampton."

"How was it that you were not relieved at Clayborough? I thought there
was always a change of guards at Clayborough."

"There used to be, sir, till the new regulations came in force last
midsummer; since when, the guards in charge of express trains go the
whole way through."

The chairman turned to the secretary.

"I think it would be as well," he said, "if we had the day-book to refer
to upon this point."

Again the secretary touched the silver hand-bell, and desired the
porter in attendance to summon Mr. Raikes. From a word or two dropped
by another of the directors, I gathered that Mr. Raikes was one of the
under-secretaries.

He came,--a small, slight, sandy-haired, keen-eyed man, with an eager,
nervous manner, and a forest of light beard and mustache. He just showed
himself at the door of the board-room, and, being requested to bring
a certain day-book from a certain shelf in a certain room, bowed and
vanished.

He was there such a moment, and the surprise of seeing him was so great
and sudden, that it was not till the door had closed upon him that I
found voice to speak. He was no sooner gone, however, than I sprang
to my feet.

"That person," I said, "is the same who met Mr. Dwerrihouse upon the
platform at Blackwater!"

There was a general movement of surprise. The chairman looked grave,
and somewhat agitated.

"Take care, Mr. Langford," he said, "take care what you say!"

"I am as positive of his identity as of my own."

"Do you consider the consequences of your words? Do you consider that
you are bringing a charge of the gravest character against one of the
company's servants?"

"I am willing to be put upon my oath, if necessary. The man who came
to that door a minute since is the same whom I saw talking with Mr.
Dwerrihouse on the Blackwater platform. Were he twenty times the
company's servant, I could say neither more nor less."

The chairman turned again to the guard.

"Did you see Mr. Raikes in the train, or on the platform?" he asked.

Somers shook his head.

"I am confident Mr. Raikes was not in the train," he said; "and I
certainly did not see him on the platform."

The chairman turned next to the secretary.

"Mr. Raikes is in your office, Mr. Hunter," he said. "Can you remember
if he was absent on the fourth instant?"

"I do not think he was," replied the secretary; "but I am not prepared
to speak positively. I have been away most afternoons myself lately,
and Mr. Raikes might easily have absented himself if he had been
disposed."

At this moment the under-secretary returned with the day-book under
his arm.

"Be pleased to refer, Mr. Raikes," said the chairman, "to the entries
of the fourth instant, and see what Benjamin Somers's duties were on
that day."

Mr. Raikes threw open the cumbrous volume, and ran a practised eye and
finger down some three or four successive columns of entries. Stopping
suddenly at the foot of a page, he then read aloud that Benjamin Somers
had on that day conducted the 4.15 express from London to Crampton.

The chairman leaned forward in his seat, looked the under-secretary
full in the face, and said, quite sharply and suddenly,--

"Where were _you_, Mr. Raikes, on the same afternoon?"

"_I_, sir?"

"You, Mr. Raikes. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the
fourth of the present month?"

"Here, sir,--in Mr. Hunter's office. Where else should I be?"

There was a dash of trepidation in the under-secretary's voice as he
said this; but his look of surprise was natural enough.

"We have some reason for believing, Mr. Raikes, that you were absent
that afternoon without leave. Was this the case?"

"Certainly not, sir. I have not had a day's holiday since September.
Mr. Hunter will bear me out in this."

Mr. Hunter repeated what he had previously said on the subject, but
added that the clerks in the adjoining office would be certain to know.
Whereupon the senior clerk, a grave, middle-aged person, in green
glasses, was summoned and interrogated.

His testimony cleared the under-secretary at once. He declared that
Mr. Raikes had in no instance, to his knowledge, been absent during
office hours since his return from his annual holiday in September.

I was confounded. The chairman turned to me with a smile, in which a
shade of covert annoyance was scarcely apparent.

"You hear, Mr. Langford?" he said.

"I hear, sir; but my conviction remains unshaken."

"I fear, Mr. Langford, that your convictions are very insufficiently
based," replied the chairman, with a doubtful cough. "I fear that you
'dream dreams,' and mistake them for actual occurrences. It is a
dangerous habit of mind, and might lead to dangerous results. Mr.
Raikes here would have found himself in an unpleasant position, had
he not proved so satisfactory an _alibi_."

I was about to reply, but he gave me no time.

"I think, gentlemen," he went on to say, addressing the board, "that
we should be wasting time to push this inquiry further. Mr. Langford's
evidence would seem to be of an equal value throughout. The testimony
of Benjamin Somers disproves his first statement, and the testimony
of the last witness disproves his second. I think we may conclude that
Mr. Langford fell asleep in the train on the occasion of his journey
to Clayborough, and dreamt an unusually vivid and circumstantial
dream,--of which, however, we have now heard quite enough."

There are few things more annoying than to find one's positive
convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling impatience
at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof against the civil
sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable of all, however,
was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of Benjamin Somers's
mouth, and the half-triumphant, half-malicious gleam in the eyes of
the under-secretary. The man was evidently puzzled, and somewhat
alarmed. His looks seemed furtively to interrogate me. Who was I? What
did I want? Why had I come there to do him an ill turn with his
employers? What was it to me whether or no he was absent without leave?

Seeing all this, and perhaps more irritated by it than the thing
deserved, I begged leave to detain the attention of the board for a
moment longer. Jelf plucked me impatiently by the sleeve.

"Better let the thing drop," he whispered. "The chairman is right
enough. You dreamt it; and the less said now the better."

I was not to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet something
to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that dreams were
not usually productive of tangible results, and that I requested to
know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved from my dream
so substantial and well-made a delusion as the cigar-case which I had
had the honor to place before him at the commencement of our interview.

"The cigar-case, I admit, Mr. Langford," the chairman replied, "is a
very strong point in your evidence. It is your _only_ strong point,
however, and there is just a possibility that we may all be misled by
a mere accidental resemblance. Will you permit me to see the case
again?"

"It is unlikely," I said, as I handed it to him, "that any other should
bear precisely this monogram, and yet be in all other particulars
exactly similar."

The chairman examined it for a moment in silence, and then passed it
to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter turned it over and over, and shook his head.

"This is no mere resemblance," he said. "It is John Dwerrihouse's
cigar-case to a certainty. I remember it perfectly. I have seen it a
hundred times."

"I believe I may say the same," added the chairman. "Yet how account
for the way in which Mr. Langford asserts that it came into his
possession?"

"I can only repeat," I replied, "that I found it on the floor of the
carriage after Mr. Dwerrihouse had alighted. It was in leaning out to
look after him that I trod upon it; and it was in running after him
for the purpose of restoring it that I saw--or believed I saw--Mr.
Raikes standing aside with him in earnest conversation."

Again I felt Jonathan Jelf plucking at my sleeve.

"Look at Raikes," he whispered,--"look at Raikes!"

I turned to where the under-secretary had been standing a moment before,
and saw him, white as death with lips trembling and livid, stealing
towards the door.

To conceive a sudden, strange, and indefinite suspicion; to fling
myself in his way; to take him by the shoulders as if he were a child,
and turn his craven face, perforce, towards the board, were with me
the work of an instant.

"Look at him!" I exclaimed. "Look at his face! I ask no better witness
to the truth of my words."

The chairman's brow darkened.

"Mr. Raikes," he said, sternly, "if you know anything, you had better
speak."

Vainly trying to wrench himself from my grasp, the under-secretary
stammered out an incoherent denial.

"Let me go," he said. "I know nothing,--you have no right to detain
me,--let me go!"

"Did you, or did you not, meet Mr. John Dwerrihouse at Blackwater
station? The charge brought against you is either true or false. If
true, you will do well to throw yourself upon the mercy of the board,
and make full confession of all that you know."

The under-secretary wrung his hands in an agony of helpless terror.

"I was away," he cried. "I was two hundred miles away at the time! I
know nothing about it--I have nothing to confess--I am innocent--I call
God to witness I am innocent!"

"Two hundred miles away!" echoed the chairman. "What do you mean?"

"I was in Devonshire. I had three weeks' leave of absence--I appeal
to Mr. Hunter--Mr. Hunter knows I had three weeks' leave of absence!
I was in Devonshire all the time--I can prove I was in Devonshire!"

Seeing him so abject, so incoherent, so wild with apprehension, the
directors began to whisper gravely among themselves; while one got
quietly up, and called the porter to guard the door.

"What has your being in Devonshire to do with the matter?" said the
chairman. "When were you in Devonshire?"

"Mr. Raikes took his leave in September," said the secretary; "about
the time when Mr. Dwerrihouse disappeared."

"I never even heard that he had disappeared till I came back!"

"That must remain to be proved," said the chairman. "I shall at once
put this matter in the hands of the police. In the mean while, Mr.
Raikes, being myself a magistrate, and used to deal with these cases,
I advise you to offer no resistance, but to confess while confession
may yet do you service. As for your accomplice--"

The frightened wretch fell upon his knees.

"I had no accomplice!" he cried. "Only have mercy upon me,--only spare
my life, and I will confess all! I didn't mean to harm him! I didn't
mean to hurt a hair of his head. Only have mercy upon me, and let me
go!"

The chairman rose in his place, pale and agitated. "Good heavens!" he
exclaimed, "what horrible mystery is this? What does it mean?"

"As sure as there is a God in heaven," said Jonathan Jelf, "it means
that murder has been done."

"No--no--no!" shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering like
a beaten hound. "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring it in
murder. I thought I had only stunned him--I never meant to do more than
stun him! Manslaughter--manslaughter--not murder!"

Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman
covered his face with his hand, and for a moment or two remained silent.

"Miserable man," he said at length, "you have betrayed yourself."

"You bade me confess! You urged me to throw myself upon the mercy of
the board!"

"You have confessed to a crime which no one suspected you of having
committed," replied the chairman, "and which this board has no power
either to punish or forgive. All that I can do for you is to advise
you to submit to the law, to plead guilty, and to conceal nothing. When
did you do this deed?"

The guilty man rose to his feet, and leaned heavily against the table.
His answer came reluctantly, like the speech of one dreaming.

"On the twenty-second of September!"

On the twenty-second of September! I looked in Jonathan Jelf's face,
and he in mine. I felt my own paling with a strange sense of wonder
and dread. I saw his blanch suddenly, even to the lips.

"Merciful heaven!" he whispered, "_what was it, then, that you saw in
the train?_"

* * * * *

What was it that I saw in the train? That question remains unanswered
to this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I only know that
it bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose body had then
been lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of branches, and brambles,
and rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted chalk-pit about
half-way between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know that it spoke, and
moved, and looked as that man spoke, and moved, and looked in life;
that I heard, or seemed to hear, things related which I could never
otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as it were, by that vision
on the platform to the identification of the murderer; and that, a
passive instrument myself, I was destined, by means of these mysterious
teachings, to bring about the ends of justice. For these things I have
never been able to account.

As for that matter of the cigar-case, it proved on inquiry, that the
carriage in which I travelled down that afternoon to Clayborough had
not been in use for several weeks, and was in point of fact the same
in which poor John Dwerrihouse had performed his last journey. The case
had, doubtless, been dropped by him, and had lain unnoticed till I found
it.

Upon the details of the murder I have no need to dwell. Those who desire
more ample particulars may find them, and the written confession of
Augustus Raikes, in the files of the Times for 1856. Enough that the
under-secretary, knowing the history of the new line, and following
the negotiation step by step through all its stages, determined to
waylay Mr. Dwerrihouse, rob him of the seventy-five thousand pounds,
and escape to America with his booty.

In order to effect these ends he obtained leave of absence a few days
before the time appointed for the payment of the money; secured his
passage across the Atlantic in a steamer advertised to start on the
twenty-third; provided himself with a heavily loaded "life-preserver,"
and went down to Blackwater to await the arrival of his victim. How he
met him on the platform with a pretended message from the board; how he
offered to conduct him by a short cut across the fields to Mallingford;
how, having brought him to a lonely place, he struck him down with the
life-preserver, and so killed him; and how, finding what he had done, he
dragged the body to the verge of an out-of-the-way chalk-pit, and there
flung it in, and piled it over with branches and brambles,--are facts
still fresh in the memories of those who, like the connoisseurs in De
Quincey's famous essay, regard murder as a fine art. Strangely enough,
the murderer, having done his work, was afraid to leave the country. He
declared that he had not intended to take the director's life, but only
to stun and rob him; and that, finding the blow had killed, he dared not
fly for fear of drawing down suspicion upon his own head. As a mere
robber he would have been safe in the States, but as a murderer he would
inevitably have been pursued, and given up to justice. So he forfeited
his passage, returned to the office as usual at the end of his leave,
and locked up his ill-gotten thousands till a more convenient
opportunity. In the mean while he had the satisfaction of finding that
Mr. Dwerrihouse was universally believed to have absconded with the
money, no one knew how or whither.

Whether he meant murder or not, however, Mr. Augustus Raikes paid the
full penalty of his crime, and was hanged at the Old Bailey in the
second week in January, 1857. Those who desire to make his further
acquaintance may see him any day (admirably done in wax) in the Chamber
of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's exhibition, in Baker Street. He is there
to be found in the midst of a select society of ladies and gentlemen of
atrocious memory, dressed in the close-cut tweed suit which he wore on
the evening of the murder, and holding in his hand the identical
life-preserver with which he committed it.

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