"It's a slip carriage," he said, smiling, tolerantly superior. "Was the connection made?" he asked, looking hard in the guard's face.
The man flushed an awkward red. "No," he said. "'Tain't worth the trouble for the little bit of a journey before we slip her."
"H'm!" said the station-master.
"Just so," said Dick, simultaneously. "So perhaps it'd be just as well for me not to have thought of the communication cord, eh?"
The station-master said nothing. But the guard looked as if there were gratitude in him somewhere.
"If the poor beggar's alive, he'll have gained by our not stopping, because he'll get a doctor and a stretcher all the quicker," Dick went on. "Now, I advise you to hold the fellow in this compartment here for your local police. Look at him. He's sat there like that ever since we ran in here. You can see he was in no hurry to give information concerning what had happened to his friend."
The station-master turned to the guard.
"Did you see anything?" he asked.
"No. But I heard a door bang. I looked out, but I heard nothing. The gentleman's quite right, though, about the two chaps scrambling in as we pulled out of Harthborough."
The station-master turned to Dick with a face diffidently serious.