“The engine-driver and stoker are both alive,” the porter told him. “I came across them before I saw you. They’re both knocked sort of sillylike, but they aren’t much hurt. The guard’s stone dead.”
“Where are we?”
“A few hundred yards from Wymondham. Let’s have a look for the other gentleman.”
Mr. John P. Dunster was lying quite still, his right leg doubled up, and a huge block of telegraph post, which the saloon had carried with it in its fall, still pressing against his forehead. He groaned as they dragged him out and laid him down upon a cushion in the shelter of the wreckage.
“He’s alive all right,” the porter remarked. “There’s a doctor on the way. Let’s cover him up quick and wait.”
“Can’t we carry him to shelter of some sort?” Gerald proposed.
The man shook his head. Speech of any sort was difficult. Even with his lips close to the other’s ears, he had almost to shout.
“Couldn’t be done,” he replied. “It’s all one can do to walk alone when you get out in the middle of the field, away from the shelter of the embankment here. There’s bits of trees flying all down the lane. Never was such a night! Folks is fair afraid of the morning to see what’s happened. There’s a mill blown right over on its side in the next field, and the man in charge of it lying dead. This poor chap’s bad enough.”
Gerald, on all fours, had crept back into the compartment. The bottle of wine was smashed into atoms. He came out, dragging the small dressing-case which his companion had kept on the table before him. One side of it was dented in, but the lock, which was of great strength, still held.
“Perhaps there’s a flask somewhere in this dressing-case,” Gerald said. “Lend me a knife.”