Local trains waste most of their time waiting at stations and chatting to the signalman. When they are on the move, they are not really easy to catch even with a fast motor, especially when they have nearly ten minutes’ start. There was no stop, so far as this train was concerned, between Weighford and Paston Oatvile. Paston Oatvile had, of course, been warned to hold up the train on arrival, but the staff there was neither numerous nor intelligent, and it seemed very probable that the elusive passenger would be on his travels again, if they could not be on the platform to intercept him. This time Reeves excelled himself and so did the Tarquin. There was no doubt about the objective; no mental undercurrent of hesitancy to breed infirmity of purpose. The driver himself became part of the machine, a mere lever in the relentless engine of human justice. Almost all the way the line was visible from the road; and as reach after reach of it was disclosed, three pairs of eyes searched for the puff of smoke that would mark the Binver train.
They saw it at last when they were a full mile off. A moment more, and they were at the station gates almost before the wheels of the train had stopped. Three harassed officials were explaining to irritated passengers that they must keep their seats, please. And so began the cruel, inevitable search for the traveller without a ticket. They found him at last, sitting apparently unconcerned in a first-class carriage; the police did not bring him out, but climbed in after him. Reeves went up to endure the effusive gratitude of the sergeant, and caught sight, as he did so, of the prisoner’s face.
It was Davenant.
Chapter XV.
Gordon takes the Opportunity to Philosophize
“It seems,” said Carmichael, blinking through his spectacles, “that I have been mistaken. My old tutor always used to say to me—that was Benger: I suppose he’d be before your time, Gordon? Of course he was—Benger always used to say to me, ‘Mr. Carmichael, always follow your nose. You’ve got a straight nose, Mr. Carmichael, but a crooked brain.’ Very witty old chap he was, Benger, always saying things like that.”
“It was a dashed funny mistake, too,” mused Reeves. “Do you realize that, quite possibly, Davenant may have stood behind that hole in the wall and heard us coming solemnly to the conclusion that he didn’t exist? That he never had existed, except as a sort of spiritual projection of old Brotherhood, and now, consequently, he had ceased to exist?”
“And what is still more singular,” said Carmichael, “is that so far from helping the cause of justice, we seem to have actually hindered it. For I take it there can be little doubt that it was our tapping and measuring upstairs which put Davenant on his guard and made him bolt.”
“Tapping? Measuring?” protested Gordon. “Don’t you believe it; it was Reeves singing. I always said the man would beat it if we let Reeves go on like that. I’d have done the same myself.”
“I’m not at all sure,” said Reeves, “that he may not have found the chewing-gum on his trousers, and formed his own conclusions that way. However, there isn’t very much harm done. The police have got their man, with no great inconvenience to anybody except that poor old collie at Weighford. Rather a fine dog it was, and the owner wasn’t a bit nice about it when I saw him.”
“I suppose,” Carmichael asked, “that the police can actually prove Davenant was the murderer?”