At last I really heard what it was that Ellen Trethewy could tell and for knowing which she had been removed to Crondall, and it did not come up to my expectations.
About noon after Peters’ murder, after Callaghan and I had gone into the village, and while Vane-Cartwright, by his own account, had stayed reading in the house, the girl had twice seen him as she looked out of the window of the cottage. She had seen him come out of the gate of the drive and turn to the right up the road away from the village. About twenty minutes later she had seen him turn in again at the gate, and this time he came down the green lane. To any one who knew the lie of the ground, the significance of this was certain. He could not have got round by road or by any public footpath in that time; either he had come through the plantation and the fields, where the tracks were made, or he must have made a round over ditches and hedges and rough ground by which a man taking a casual and innocent stroll was extremely unlikely to have gone, especially in frost and snow.
The inference was convincing enough to me, but then, as I knew, I was ready to be convinced. Vane-Cartwright was not likely, I felt, to have done so much to prevent the girl revealing merely this. Was there nothing more?
Yes, there was, but it was something of which Ellen did not feel sure. During that twenty minutes the sun shone out brilliantly upon the snow, and tempted her to stroll out a little way up the drive, when she stood for awhile to look, in spite of the horror of the time, with delight at the spotless covering of the lawn and the shining burden of the cedar branches, and then up at the sun. Her eyes were soon so dazzled that all sorts of fancied shapes danced before them. Turning suddenly and looking towards the field, she thought for an instant, but only an instant, that she saw between two trees a man up in the field, about half-way up, walking towards the hedge, towards a spot in the hedge which we already know. She covered her eyes with her hand and looked again with clearer vision. There was no one there, and she tried to brush aside the fancy that she had seen any one. But somehow she had often wondered since about what she had seen, and somehow she connected it in her fancy with the murder. She could not connect it with the making of the tracks, for she had only read of them in a muddled newspaper report which had given an entirely wrong impression as to whereabouts they were found. Now it was all obvious. Vane-Cartwright, while he made those very tracks, had passed before her eyes; he had seen her standing and looking towards him, and he could not entertain the hope, though it was true, that her eyes did not see him clear.
This much being plain, my first thought was of amazement at the coolness of Vane-Cartwright on the evening after the murder, while he could not be sure that the discovery of the tracks had not been told to the girl and had not already drawn forth from her an explanation which, if believed, must be fatal to him. My second thought was of great disappointment that the identification of him with the maker of the tracks was still to so large an extent a matter of inference. I cannot say whether I myself, or Trethewy, or the girl, who, having long brooded over these matters without the necessary clue, now showed astonishing quickness in grasping them, was first to see the next step which the enquiry required. Evidence must be sought which would show whether Vane-Cartwright or some other person had undone the window-latch in Peters’ room. I was ready immediately to rush off to Long Wilton and see whether Sergeant Speke could recollect anything of importance about the movements of the persons who were in the room that morning. It was the girl who suggested to me a possible witness rather nearer at hand. The young doctor had been in the room till nearly the last, and, as her mother happened to have told her, he had very shortly after the event in question removed to London. Could not I see him?
I resolved to see him, if I could, that day, for I thought I could gain nothing by further waiting near Crondall. I was anxious about the safety of Ellen Trethewy, but I found her father, who was as much persuaded as I of the peril which continued to hang over her, had formed his own plan for promptly removing her; he thought we should be safer separate; and it reassured me to see a reminiscence of his wild youth sparkle in his now sober countenance as he said that it would not be the first time that he had baffled a pursuit.
Upon some calculation, prompted perhaps by excessive precaution and futile craft, such as may well be excused in excited men who have found themselves surrounded by unimagined dangers, we decided that I should not start for any of the stations on the branch line that passes Crondall, but should leave my luggage behind, drive, in a fast trap which the baker sometimes let out, to an ancient castle in the neighbourhood, thence, three miles, to the junction on the main line to London, send the trap back with a note to my landlord, and go to town by the one fast train in the day which there was easy time to catch. I suppose we thought I should get some start of Vane-Cartwright, and that this was worth while, as he was likely to stick close to me, and had shown already his fertility of baleful resource.
Accordingly, I arrived at the junction just as the up-train came in. The train from Crondall had arrived a little while before, and was standing in a bay on the other side of my platform of departure. I was by this time so sleepy that I could hardly keep my eyes open as I walked. I did barely notice the screaming approach of a third train, which was in fact the down-train from London, but in which of course I felt no interest, and I noticed some but not quite all of the people on the platform or in the waiting-shed. I took my seat in the far corner of a carriage. I began instantly to doze, and the train, I believe, waited there awhile. I faintly heard shouts and whistles which heralded the starting of the train, but it did not start immediately. When the carriage door again opened and two other passengers got in, I did half-open my eyes; but I started broad awake when to those half-open eyes my fellow-passengers revealed themselves as Vane-Cartwright and the foreign visitor at the inn, whose looks I had irrationally disliked. I say broad awake—but not awake enough to do the proper thing to be done. The train was already in motion before they sat down, and my fellow-passengers with their luggage so encumbered the door that I could not have got back on to the platform. I ought, I suppose, to have pulled the communication cord. As it was, I merely sat up, looking at them as indifferently as I could, while really my heart sank within me, and I wished my muscles had not been so stiff and chilled from my adventure of the night before.
The train was moving but not yet fast. It seemed to be slowing down again. There was fresh shouting and whistling on the platform; the stationmaster saying angrily, “Put him in here”; a voice that sounded somehow well known, but which I could not recognise, answering him vigorously; and just as the train began to go faster a big man, still shouting and very hot with pursuit, tumbled into the carriage. To my delighted surprise I found myself joined by Callaghan.
The most surprising turns of good fortune, I have learned to think, are generally the reward of more than common forethought on the part of some one. My rescue in this case, which I will none the less call providential, could never have happened but for the zealous care of Callaghan himself, and of another person many hundred miles from the scene.