“No, sir. No crossing, no road, no path, no nothing,” said the porter, ruthlessly sacrificing grammar to emphasis. “He must have come across the fields and climbed over the fence to get onto the permanent way. Deliberate suicide is what it looks like.”
“How did you learn all this?” Thorndyke inquired.
“Why, the driver, you see, sir, when him and his mate had lifted the body off the track, went on to the next signal box and sent in his report by telegram. The station-master told me all about it as we walked down the line.”
Thorndyke thanked the man for his information, and, as we strolled back towards the lamp-room, discussed the bearing of these new facts.
“Our friend is unquestionably right in one respect,” he said; “this was not an accident. The man might, if he were near-sighted, deaf or stupid, have climbed over the fence and got knocked down by the train. But his position, lying across the rails, can only be explained by one of two hypotheses: either it was, as the porter says, deliberate suicide, or else the man was already dead or insensible. We must leave it at that until we have seen the body, that is, if the police will allow us to see it. But here comes the station-master and an officer with him. Let us hear what they have to say.”
The two officials had evidently made up their minds to decline any outside assistance. The divisional surgeon would make the necessary examination, and information could be obtained through the usual channels. The production of Thorndyke’s card, however, somewhat altered the situation. The police inspector hummed and hawed irresolutely, with the card in his hand, but finally agreed to allow us to view the body, and we entered the lamp-room together, the station-master leading the way to turn up the gas.
The stretcher stood on the floor by one wall, its grim burden still hidden by the tarpaulin, and the hand-bag and umbrella lay on a large box, together with the battered frame of a pair of spectacles from which the glasses had fallen out.
“Were these spectacles found by the body?” Thorndyke inquired.
“Yes,” replied the station-master. “They were close to the head and the glass was scattered about on the ballast.”
Thorndyke made a note in his pocket-book, and then, as he inspector removed the tarpaulin, he glanced down on the corpse, lying limply on the stretcher and looking grotesquely horrible with its displaced head and distorted limbs. For fully a minute he remained silently stooping over the uncanny object, on which the inspector was now throwing the light of a large lantern; then he stood up and said quietly to me: “I think we can eliminate two out of the three hypotheses.”