“Quite true, Mr Wesley. And what did you see?”
“Nothing at first, sir, for there is a curve in that tunnel and you don’t see the line ahead until you’re almost out of it. It was young Arthur, my fireman. He noticed one of the schoolboys running across close to the embankment, as he might run in a game. Then he was lost sight of as he went under the lee of the bank. I was watching the pressure gauges, which can’t be read very easily in the tunnel for want of light.”
“What would your speed be?”
“Oh, thirty miles an hour at the most, and I daresay more like twenty-five just there. It isn’t a place for anyone to do away with themselves.”
“But it is accessible to those with suicide in mind.”
Mr Wesley took a modest pull at his small beer and shrugged.
“That’s true, sir. But Arthur suddenly shouted to me, ‘Stop! Brake!’ I had my hand on the lever, and even before I’d seen the boy, I’d given it a darn good pull. It didn’t take half as long to do it as to tell it!”
“And the train stopped?”
“Not at once. They don’t stop at once. What you get first, Mr Holmes, is a bit of a jerk. Then she do slide on the rails. And then she do stop with a big jerk and all the passengers is thrown about.”
“And when did you first see the boy?”
Mr Wesley exhaled thoughtfully.
“With the weight of a train behind you it can take the best part of a hundred yards to come to rest. While she was sliding I saw him standing there on the track, looking straight at us.”
“Very disagreeable for you,” I said sympathetically.
He looked surprised.
“Oh, I never thought we’d hit him, doctor. Not where he was. He’d only to step aside. A hundred yards nearer would have been a different matter, but he could never have got that close. We came right up to him before she was at rest, but he couldn’t have done himself any harm.”
“And then?”
“He got off the line, sir. I think he went after another boy I didn’t see. Down behind the bank, most like. He shouted at someone. I never saw the other. Arthur thought there was one in the linesman’s hut at first.”
“Did you think that the boy who had been on the railway line was afraid of the other boy you never saw?”
Samuel Wesley thought this amusing and shook his head.
“I did not, Mr Holmes! Your young chap was smallish but in a mood to knock seven bells out of someone. A terrier! Don’t ask me what it was about, though. I got down from the footplate to give ’im a piece of my mind but he ran off. I shouted after ’im and asked what the damnation he thought he was doing. I couldn’t go and leave the engine standing there, but the whole thing was reported as soon as we got to Ryde. Now I’m told they’re going to do what they should have done long ago. Put a proper barbed-wire fence from the linesman’s hut to the tunnel mouth. They’ll care too much about their skins to try getting over that.”
“Whoever they were,” said Holmes thoughtfully, “one might have expected them to run down the bank towards the school. But they did not, did they? The first one ran down the bank away from the school, did he not? And your terrier followed him.”
“How could you tell which way they ran?” Mr Wesley asked with a laugh. “You was never there, sir.”
“No,” said Holmes in the same thoughtful tone, “but someone else was.”
Samuel Wesley’s evidence, which seemed to have been sought by no one but Holmes and me, altered the story of the drama.
To a more distant observer on higher ground, the sight of Patrick Riley running out on to the track in front of an oncoming train might look like an attempt at suicide. At least, it might be conveniently described as that. This more distant observer, perhaps smoking his pipe among the elders and ash saplings by the pond, might not see the second boy with the train blocking his view. After hearing Mr Wesley, however, I could not help feeling that our young client had indeed gone out with a rage to murder rather than an impulse to destroy himself.
As we walked back to St Vincent’s, I said, “Tell me, Holmes, how could you know which way they ran? I should have thought it most likely that they would have gone down the near side of the embankment and back to the school.”
“Across Reginald Winter’s field of vision,” he said sceptically. “Unless my brains have turned to sawdust, the unknown boy was one who had determined that he would not be seen during this little drama, while making certain that Patrick Riley should. I can prove that in the next half-hour. If not, on our return to town I shall stand you the most expensive dinner on the menu of the Langham Hotel.”
7
Our second interview with Patrick Riley was one of the most difficult that Holmes and I had ever undertaken. I was reminded of nothing so much as the occasion when an injured sparrow stumbled on to our window-sill in Baker Street. It had damaged a wing, and, for my part, I should have thought it best put out of its misery. Nothing would do for Sherlock Holmes, however, but it must be caught. Then it must be installed in a cage with a makeshift splint and fed on bread and cheese until the frail little thing had mended. It was duly released among the trees of the Regent’s Park.
I shall never forget the pantomime of catching it to begin with, the twin dangers of letting it fall off the sill to certain death or doing it some terrible damage by snatching at its elusive little body. Cadet Riley was a case in point. One wrong word, one ill-chosen nuance, and we should lose him. As we sat once again at the table in the school sanatorium with its empty beds and sunlight through a mullioned window, Holmes asked, “May we count upon you to tell us the truth this time, Patrick Riley?”
The young face looked startled, first at Holmes and then at me.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“I suggest you know perfectly well. You were not going out on that Sunday afternoon to kill yourself, were you? I think we have established that.”
“Was I not?” There was such confusion in the response.
“You know you were not. You told us you were far more likely to kill someone else!”
The fourteen-year-old sat and stared at us. Was it that he did not understand the point of the question? Or did he understand it pretty well and not know what to say?
Holmes let a long silence pass. Then he said, very gently, “You must trust me again before I can trust you.”
“Yes …” His head was down and even sitting at the same table I could barely hear the soft whisper of that single syllable.
“Good!” said Holmes enthusiastically, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. “Now why did you go out on that Sunday afternoon?”
Riley still hesitated and then gave up the game.
“To meet John Porson.”
“The boy who lost the postal order? He who had been your friend?”
“Yes, Mr Holmes. They would never have let me go to him, at least on my own.”
“Whose idea was it? Porson’s?”
“I thought so.”
“If they would not let you go out for a walk, do you ask us to believe that they would let you exchange messages with Porson? How could you communicate with him?”
Riley shook his head and then pushed his chair back. Beside his bed was a tin tray, a dark brown thing of the kind familiar in hospital wards. He brought it back to us and sat down.
“Two days before, Mr Holmes, on the Friday, the headmaster’s maid—‘Mitzi,’ we call her—brought my lunch in here. I wasn’t allowed to mix with the other boys, so I had all my meals here. When I lifted the plate, there was chalk writing on the tray. The plate had hidden it. Just a message. ‘Linesman’s hut. Sun 3.30. JLP. RSVP.’ That was all.”
“John Learmount Porson,” said Holmes quietly, “You were to meet him by the railway line on Sunday afternoon at half-past three. What happened then?”