Bowman raised the bottle to his lips again. He was queer-looking all right: thin legs, little pot of a belly, head too small, nose too big. He might have been built from bits of several other men.
I said, 'You take your own pictures now, I see.'
He tipped his little head up towards me, pushed at his specs.
'The editor was minded to make economies, as he is in every matter except those touching on his own salary and expenses. He said, "You go roving about so much - it costs fortunes to have you always accompanied. Take your own pictures.'"
He leant forward towards the fire, staring into it as he warmed his hands.
'Not to boast, Jim, but I am The Railway Rover. Apart from anything else, I'm the only one who ever leaves the bloody office. As regards the pictures, I do just take a pot, you know, and it seems to work.'
He was reaching into the valise he'd carried off the Whitby train.
'I've a mind to stop writing altogether, and go all out on photography. It's a good deal quicker - at least, it is the way I do it. There's one of mine here, if you'll just hold on a second.'
He took out a journal, and I had my first sight of The Railway Rover. Bowman leafed through it for a while, before handing it over kept open at a certain page.
'What's your opinion?'
The article was entitled 'Some Drivers and Their Engines', words and pictures by S. J. Bowman. The photograph in question showed a smart o-8-o at some station or other.
'It seems a first-rate picture to me,' I said, 'but -'
'Be straight now,' said Bowman, giving a twisted little grin.
'Well - that telegraph pole does appear to come straight up out of the locomotive chimney.'
Bowman sighed, sitting back again.
'But that's down to the driver stopping directly in front of the telegraph pole.' 'He's stopped there for a signal, or for whatever reason,' I said. 'Aesthetics don't come into it.'
'Well, I was damned if I was going to ask him to move the engine,' said Bowman. 'Peters would do that, you know. He'd go up to the driver, and he'd say, "Could you just reverse out of this shadow that you're presently standing in?" and the chap'd say, "Reverse out of this what?" Couldn't believe it.'
He shook his head and looked away as I said, 'But if you'd moved .. .'
He was back at his bottle; back to gazing at vacancy.
I dragged my own bench closer to the fireplace, leafing through The Railway Rover as I did so. 'Notes by Rocket' came at the back. They were light items: 'In a trade supplement recently appearing in The Times newspaper, an article on "New Railway Locomotives of the Midland Railway" gives prominence to a picture of a z-6-o engine of the GWR. As any schoolboy knows, this is not an Atlantic, is not new and does not belong to the Midland. Otherwise, we can have no complaints whatever as to the accuracy of the representation.'
It was well-turned, I supposed; a little fancier than the common run of railway writing.
I went through the pages again, heading backwards this time.
'What time's this milk train due?' Bowman asked, after a while.
'Twenty to five,' I said.
We were to go on to Whitby by the first train of the day. It was the morning milk, but one passenger carriage was carried along behind the vans.
'Can't think why we've hung on here after all,' said Bowman.
Why had he stayed? He could've told me what he knew about Peters in good time to re-board the Whitby train. But I reserved that particular question - along with about a hundred others.
'Will you be investigating the matter yourself?' Bowman asked.
'Shouldn't think so,' I said, and I lifted my eyes from The Railway Rover to think of Detective Sergeant Shillito. That bastard would put the kybosh on any independent action on my part. Besides, this was a matter for the Northern Division of the railway force, whereas we in York belonged to the Southern Division.
Crystal was eyeing me once again through the ticket pigeonhole.
'What are you reading?' asked Bowman.
'An item called "The Railways in Spain".'
'They fall mainly on the plain,' said Bowman, leaning back on his bench. He kept silence for a minute, before muttering 'Fawcett' and shaking his head. The article was, I saw, by B. R. M. Fawcett.
I took it up again. The clock ticked.
'I'm surprised at your sticking with that, quite honestly,' said Bowman. 'I mean to say, do you not find the style rather antiquated?'
I read on, while Bowman watched me.
'"We must advert to—",' he said, after a space. 'That's Fawcett all over. I will not "advert".'
'He knows his stuff on the railways of Spain,' I said.
'Yes,' said Bowman. 'Well, he's better up on train matters than I am.'
'How do you mean?' I said, looking at him. 'That's the whole subject of the journal.'
Bowman shrugged.
'You have no interest in railways?' I asked him.
'I started penny-a-lining around Fleet Street after school - got afloat on railways, that's all. Railway topics were the easiest ones to get rid of.'
'Did you not play trains as a boy?'
'Must've done, I suppose. I really can't recall.'
He took another pull on the beer bottle.
'I'm done, I don't mind telling you,' he said. 'I was up all hours last night as well.'
'Up at Gateshead, weren't you?'
This had come out earlier on.
Bowman nodded.
'Function at the Railwaymen's Institute there,' he said, yawning. 'Presentation of a cabinet gramophone to a fellow who'd done fifty years of service. I thought it might make an item in "Queer and Quaint".'
'And will it?'
'If I'm desperate come press day,' he went on, walking over to the window that gave on to the station yard. 'When a function bores the daylights out of me I'll generally put "Several interesting speeches were made", and leave it at that.'
Bowman had spotted something through the window, for he fell away from his speech and craned closer to the glass. I joined him at the window. In the light of dawn there was a bike half-buried in a drift, and a young lad picking himself off the road. It was me six years ago: Crystal's lad porter, arriving for his day's work.
He lifted the bicycle and started pushing it through the snow, kicking the stuff up as he went.
He walked through the station door, the left side of his uniform covered with snow. I nodded at him, and he shot me a funny look - 'Morning, mister' - before blundering through into the ticket office and closing the door behind him.
I heard his cry of 'What the bloody hell's that, Mr Crystal?' and then Crystal came down on him like a ton of coal, vociferating away for a good half-minute, as Bowman finished off his beer bottle.
'Rather wearing, the company of a chap like that,' he said, leaning forward on his perch, and pushing his spectacles up his nose.
When he'd finished bawling at the kid, Crystal furnished some sort of explanation, and although I couldn't make out the whole scene through the ticket window, the lad must have been permitted a look under the blanket, for he exclaimed, in a voice loud enough to be clearly heard beyond the ticket office, 'Hold on, I know that bloke!'
This checked Bowman, who was setting about another beer bottle. He froze with the opener in his hand, all ears. I was on my feet straightaway, and into the ticket office. 'You don't ruddy know him,' Crystal was saying, as he put on his topcoat. (Having worked all night, he was about to be relieved by a spare man from Loftus up the way). He eyeballed me for a moment, then relented.