"I'm afraid you ought to wait here, sir," he said.
"I know I ought not. Duty's duty, and you can't keep me, my good fellow," replied Dick, dredging the breast pocket of his coat and producing and opening his cigarette-case. "Here's my card. The address will always find me."
The station-master looked at the card, hesitating still, and turning it about in his fingers.
"I can uncouple the through carriage," he said.
"And I can move my party to another," Dick blandly retorted. "And you'll only inconvenience everybody up the line that meant to use it. See here, man; I'm witness of what was possibly an accident. I give you the information, and add my private opinion that it was something worse than an accident. That's all. It's up to you to put your police on the job, not to disturb a traveller that wasn't even in the man's compartment. Ask this fellow here, who was in it. Most likely he's got no ticket, running it fine as they did at Harthborough. That'll give you reason enough to make him miss the train while one of your men's fetching a constable. And the constable won't let him out of sight till you've found the other man, alive or dead. But he won't object to waiting, unless he wants to rouse suspicion. Now I do object." And here Dick laughed. "Why," he went on, "with your way of doing things, they'd have to arrest a hundred witnesses every time a lorry ran into a lamp-post."
And he stood by, lighting his pipe, while the station-master attempted to extract information from the man in overalls.
He proved docile enough; mumbled a halting tale of dozing in his corner when his friend, leaning from the window, had been launched from the train by the sudden opening of the door. Supposed it hadn't been properly latched; his friend had been fooling with the lock a few minutes before. No, there'd been no words—not to say quarrel; they'd talked a bit—nothing more. Oh, yes, of course he'd get out and wait over, and do his bit to help 'em find his chum—poor, silly blighter!
The man cast one sly side-glance at Dick, and thought he was not being watched.
But Dick saw, and gathered from that one flash of the eye that this was Pépe's "Hebérto, the London man," and that 'Erb was not even yet sure whether this was or was not the wild man who had leapt upon him from the stairs in the hall at "The Myrtles," eight or nine hours ago.
As the train ran out of Todsmoor, "I shouldn't wonder," said Dick comfortably to Amaryllis, "if that's the last fence, and a straight run home for us."