Boscovitch continued to stare up at the little square case covered with Willesden canvas. Presently he remarked: “I often used to wonder what you had in it when you were down at Chelmsford in connection with that bank murder—what an amazing case that was, by the way, and didn’t your methods of research astonish the police!” As he still looked up wistfully at the case, Thorndyke good-naturedly lifted it down and unlocked it. As a matter of fact he was rather proud of his “portable laboratory,” and certainly it was a triumph of condensation, for, small as it was—only a foot square by four inches deep—it contained a fairly complete outfit for a preliminary investigation.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Boscovitch, when the case lay open before him, displaying its rows of little reagent bottles, tiny test-tubes, diminutive spirit-lamp, dwarf microscope and assorted instruments on the same Lilliputian scale; “it’s like a doll’s house—everything looks as if it was seen through the wrong end of a telescope. But are these tiny things really efficient? That microscope now——”
“Perfectly efficient at low and moderate magnifications,” said Thorndyke. “It looks like a toy, but it isn’t one; the lenses are the best that can be had. Of course a full-sized instrument would be infinitely more convenient—but I shouldn’t have it with me, and should have to make shift with a pocket-lens. And so with the rest of the under-sized appliances; they are the alternative to no appliances.”
Boscovitch pored over the case and its contents, fingering the instruments delicately and asking questions innumerable about their uses; indeed, his curiosity was but half appeased when, half-an-hour later, the train began to slow down.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, starting up and seizing his bag, “here we are at the junction already. You change here too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “We take the branch train on to Warmington.”
As we stepped out onto the platform, we became aware that something unusual was happening or had happened. All the passengers and most of the porters and supernumeraries were gathered at one end of the station, and all were looking intently into the darkness down the line.
“Anything wrong?” asked Mr. Boscovitch, addressing the station-inspector.
“Yes, sir,” the official replied; “a man has been run over by the goods train about a mile down the line. The station master has gone down with a stretcher to bring him in, and I expect that is his lantern that you see coming this way.”
As we stood watching the dancing light grow momentarily brighter, flashing fitful reflections from the burnished rails, a man came out of the booking-office and joined the group of onlookers. He attracted my attention, as I afterwards remembered, for two reasons: in the first place his round, jolly face was excessively pale and bore a strained and wild expression, and, in the second, though he stared into the darkness with eager curiosity he asked no questions.