Ernest Bramah

“ How is it possible that a nation should be so divided—its men so dull-witted and offensive, its women so quick, sympathetic and capable of appreciating?”
“But a little expensive, too, at times?” suggested Carrados.
Drishna sighed heavily.
“Yes; it is incredible. It is the generosity of their large nature. My allowance, though what most of you would call noble, has proved quite inadequate. I was compelled to borrow money and the interest became overwhelming. ”

“ I loathe you in your complacent hypocrisy, Mr Carlyle, despise and utterly abominate you from an eminence of superiority that you can never even understand.”
“I think we are getting rather away from the point, Mr Drishna,” interposed Carrados, with the impartiality of a judge. “Unless I am misinformed, you are not so ungallant as to include everyone you have met here in your execration?”
“Ah, no,” admitted Drishna, descending into a quite ingenuous frankness. “Much as I hate your men I love your women. ”

“ Now, Mead, what is he like? You have seen him, of course?”
“Yes. He does not impress me favourably. He is glib, ingratiating, and distinctly ‘greasy.’ He has a ready answer for everything almost before the question is out of your mouth. He has thought of everything.”
“And now you are going to tell me something, Louis,” said Carrados encouragingly.
Mr Carlyle laughed a little to cover an involuntary movement of surprise.
“There is a suggestive line that was not touched at the inquiries,” he admitted. “Hutchins has been a saving man all his life, and he has received good wages. ”

“ It will be put down to an hallucination and taken as showing the state of your mind.”
“But what guarantee have we that he will not escape?” whispered Mr Carlyle.
“He cannot escape,” replied Carrados tranquilly. “His identity is too clear.”
“I have no intention of trying to escape,” put in Drishna, as he wrote. “You hardly imagine that I have not considered this eventuality, do you?”
“All the same,” murmured the ex-lawyer, “I should like to have a jury behind me. It is one thing to execute a man morally; it is another to do it almost literally.” ”

“ He is a widower with one daughter, a very nice-mannered girl of about twenty. Mead is a young man, and he and the girl are sweethearts—have been informally engaged for some time. But old Hutchins would not hear of it; he seems to have taken a dislike to the signalman from the first and latterly he had forbidden him to come to his house or his daughter to speak to him.”
“Excellent, Louis,” cried Carrados in great delight. “We shall clear your man in a blaze of red and green lights yet and hang the glib, ‘greasy’ signalman from his own signal-post.” ”

“ The firm you dealt with will go to the courts, and the money, being directly traceable, will be held forfeit as no good consideration passed.”
“Max!” cried Mr Carlyle hotly, “you are not going to let this scoundrel cheat the gallows after all?”
“The best use you can make of the gallows is to cheat it, Louis,” replied Carrados. “Have you ever reflected what human beings will think of us a hundred years hence?”
“Oh, of course I’m not really in favour of hanging,” admitted Mr Carlyle.
“Nobody really is. But we go on hanging. ”

“ In any case he would be disgraced, for it is easier on the face of it to believe that a man might run past a danger signal in absentmindedness, without noticing it, than that a man should pull off a signal and replace it without being conscious of his actions.”
“The fireman was killed. Does your theory involve the certainty of the fireman being killed, Louis?”
“No,” said Carlyle. “The fireman is a difficulty, but looking at it from Mead’s point of view—whether he has been guilty of an error or a crime—it resolves itself into this: First, the fireman may be killed. ”

“ The consequence is that you get a very unsatisfactory affair that has no special interest to an amateur and is only baffling because it is—well——”
“Well, baffling?”
“Exactly, Max. Your would-be jest has discovered the proverbial truth. I need hardly tell you that it is only the insoluble that is finally baffling and this is very probably insoluble. You remember the awful smash on the Central and Suburban at Knight’s Cross Station a few weeks ago?”
“Yes,” replied Carrados, with interest. “I read the whole ghastly details at the time.” ”

“ He is a decent, bluff, short-spoken old chap, with his heart in his work. Just now you’ll find him at his worst—bitter and suspicious. The thought of swabbing down a lavatory and taking pennies all day is poisoning him.”
“Naturally. Well, there we have honest Hutchins: taciturn, a little touchy perhaps, grown grey in the service of the company, and manifesting quite a bulldog-like devotion to his favourite 538.”
“Why, that actually was the number of his engine—how do you know it?” demanded Carlyle sharply.
“It was mentioned two or three times at the inquest, Louis,” replied Carrados mildly. ”

“ An Indian gentleman, I presume?” hazarded Carrados.
It appeared that Mr Ghoosh was an Indian. Miss Chubb confided that at first she had been rather perturbed at the idea of taking in “a black man,” as she confessed to regarding him. She reiterated, however, that Mr Ghoosh proved to be “quite the gentleman.” Five minutes of affability put Carrados in full possession of Mr Ghoosh’s manner of life and movements—the dates of his arrival and departure, his solitariness and his daily habits. ”

“ Second, he may not notice the signal at all. Third, in any case he will loyally corroborate his driver and the good old jury will discount that.”
Carrados smoked thoughtfully, his open, sightless eyes merely appearing to be set in a tranquil gaze across the room.
“It would not be an improbable explanation,” he said presently. “Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would say: ‘People do not do these things.’ But you and I, who have in our different ways studied criminology, know that they sometimes do, or else there would be no curious crimes. ”

“ The heavy train was in the wrong. But was the engine-driver responsible? He claimed, and he claimed vehemently from the first and he never varied one iota, that he had a ‘clear’ signal—that is to say, the green light, it being dark. The signalman concerned was equally dogged that he never pulled off the signal—that it was at ‘danger’ when the accident happened and that it had been for five minutes before. Obviously, they could not both be right.”
“Why, Louis?” asked Mr Carrados smoothly. ”

“ Whatever Parkinson thought of the arrangement of going into second-rate apartments in an obscure street it is to be inferred that his devotion to his master was sufficient to overcome his private emotions as a self-respecting “man.” ”

“ The seven-eleven is the only one that does a run from the Bridge to Swanstead. You see, it is just on the close of the evening rush, as they call it. A good many late business gentlemen living at Swanstead use the seven-eleven regular. The other journeys we stop at every station to Lambeth Bridge, and then here and there beyond. ”

“ It got to be quite a saying among those who used the train regular; they used to look out for it.”
Carrados’s sightless eyes had the one quality of concealing emotion supremely. “Oh,” he commented softly, “always; and it was quite a saying, was it? And why was it always so on Thursday?”
“It had to do with the early closing, I’m told. The suburban traffic was a bit different. ”

“ And now they talk of putting me in a lavatory—me that has been with the company for five and forty years and on the foot-plate thirty-two—a man suspected of running past a danger signal.”
“You have had a rough time, Hutchins; you will have to exercise your patience a little longer yet,” said Carrados sympathetically. ”

“ The engine-driver is your client, of course?”
“Yes,” admitted Carlyle. “But how the deuce did you know?”
“Let us say that your sympathies are enlisted on his behalf. The jury were inclined to exonerate the signalman, weren’t they? What has the company done with your man?”
“Both are suspended. Hutchins, the driver, hears that he may probably be given charge of a lavatory at one of the stations. ”

“ I heard on reliable authority, and very early, that the Central and Suburban, and the Deferred especially, was safe to fall heavily, through a motor bus amalgamation that was then a secret. I opened a bear account and sold largely. ”