THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (25 page)

‘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 grey 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 saw 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 by pushing 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 not 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’s 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 the honour 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 also 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 shall we 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, was 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!’