“I say, Hazell,” he began, “you’re just the fellow they want here.”
“What’s up?” asked Hazell, taking off his camera and commencing some “exercises.”
“I’ve just been down to the station. I know the station master very well, and he tells me an awfully queer thing happened on the line last night.”
“Where?”
“On the Didcot branch. It’s a single line, you know, running through the Berkshire Downs to Didcot.”
Hazell smiled, and went on whirling his arms round his head.
“Kind of you to give me the information,” he said, “but I happen to know the line. But what’s occurred?”
“Well, it appears a freight train left Didcot last night bound through to Winchester, and that one of the cars never arrived here at Newbury.”
“Not very much in that,” replied Hazell, still at his “exercises,” “unless the car in question was behind the brake and the couplings snapped, in which case the next train along might have run into it.”
“Oh, no. The car was in the middle of the train.”
“Probably left in a siding by mistake,” replied Hazell.
“But the station master says that all the stations along the line have been wired to, and that it isn’t at any of them.”
“Very likely it never left Didcot.”
“He declares there is no doubt about that.”
“Well, you begin to interest me,” replied Hazell, stopping his whirligigs and beginning to eat his plasmon. “There may be something in it, though very often a car is mislaid. But I’ll go down to the station.”
“I’ll go with you, Hazell, and introduce you to the station master. He has heard of your reputation.”
Ten minutes later they were in the station master’s office, Hazell having re-slung his camera.
“Very glad to meet you,” said that functionary, “for this affair promises to be mysterious. I can’t make it out at all.”
“Do you know what the missing car contained?”
“That’s just where the bother comes in, sir. It was valuable property. There’s a loan exhibition of pictures at Winchester next week, and this car was bringing down some of them from Leamington. They belong to Sir Gilbert Murrell — three of them, I believe — large pictures, and each in a separate packing case.”
“H’m... this sounds very funny. Are you sure the car was on the train?”
“Simpson, the brakeman, is here now, and I’ll send for him. Then you can hear the story in his own words.”
So the brakeman appeared on the scene. Hazell looked at him narrowly, but there was nothing suspicious in his honest face.
“I know the car was on the train when we left Didcot,” he said in answer to inquiries, “and I noticed it at Upton, the next station, where we took a couple off. It was the fifth or sixth in front of my brake. I’m quite certain of that. We stopped at Compton to take up a cattle car, but I didn’t get out there. Then we ran right through to Newbury, without stopping at the other stations, and then I discovered that the car was not on the train. I thought very likely it might have been left at Upton or Compton by mistake, but I was wrong, for they say it isn’t there. That’s all I know about it, sir. A rum go, ain’t it?”
“Extraordinary!” exclaimed Hazell. “You must have made a mistake.”
“No, sir, I’m sure I haven’t.”
“Did the engineer notice anything?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, but the thing’s impossible,” said Hazell. “A loaded car couldn’t have been spirited away! What time was it when you left Didcot?”
“About eight o’clock, sir.”
“Ah! — quite dark. You noticed nothing along the line?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“You were at your brake all the time, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir — while we were running.”
At this moment there came a knock at the station master’s door and a porter entered.
“There’s a passenger train just in from the Didcot branch,” said the man, “and the driver reports that he saw a car loaded with packing cases in Churn siding.”
“Well, I’m blowed!” exclaimed the brakeman. “Why, we ran through Churn without a stop — trains never do stop there except in camp time.”
“Where is Churn?” asked Hazell, for once at a loss.
“It’s merely a platform and a siding close to the camp between Upton and Compton,” replied the station master, “for the convenience of troops only, and very rarely used, except in the summer, when soldiers are encamped there.”
“I should very much like to see the place, and as soon as possible,” said Hazell.
“So you shall,” replied the station master. “A train will soon start on the branch. Inspector Hill shall go with you, and instruction shall be given to the engineer to stop there, while a return train can pick you both up.”
In less than an hour Hazell and Inspector Hill alighted at Churn. It is a lonely enough place, situated in a vast, flat basin of the Downs, scarcely relieved by a single tree, and far from all human habitation, with the exception of a lonely shepherd’s cottage some half a mile away.
The “station” itself is only a single platform, with a shelter and a solitary siding, terminating in what is known in railway language as a “dead end” — that is, in this case, wooden buffers to stop any cars. This siding runs off from the single line of rail at a switch from the Didcot direction of the line.
And in this siding was the lost car, right against the “dead end,” filled with three packing-cases, and labeled “Leamington to Winchester, via Newbury.” There could be no doubt about it at all. But how it had got there from the middle of a train running through without a stop was a mystery even to the acute mind of Thorpe Hazell.
“Well,” said the inspector, “we’d better have a look at the switch. Come along.”
There is not even a signal-box at this primitive station. The switch is actuated by two levers in a ground frame, standing close by the side of the line, one lever unlocking and the other operating the switch.
“How about this switch?” said Hazell as they drew near. “You use it so occasionally that I suppose it’s kept out of action?”
“Certainly,” replied the inspector. “A block of wood is bolted down between the end of the switch rail and the main rail, fixed as a wedge — ah! there it is, you see, quite untouched; and the levers themselves are locked — here’s the keyhole in the ground frame. This is the strangest thing I’ve ever come across, Mr. Hazell.”
Thorpe Hazell stood looking at the levers, sorely puzzled. They must have been worked to get that car in the siding, he knew well. But how?
Suddenly his face lit up. Oil evidently had been used to loosen the nut of the bolt that fixed the wedge of wood. Then his eyes fell on the handle of one of the two levers, and a slight exclamation of joy escaped him.
“Look,” said the inspector at that moment, “it’s impossible to pull them off,” and he stretched out his hand towards a lever. To his astonishment Hazell seized him by the collar and dragged him back before he could touch it.
“I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed, “hope I’ve not hurt you, but I want to photograph those levers first, if you don’t mind.”
The inspector watched him rather sullenly as he fixed his camera on a folding tripod stand he had with him, only a few inches from the handle of one of the levers, and took two very careful photographs of it.
“Can’t see the use of that, sir,” growled the inspector. But Hazell vouchsafed no reply.