The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “Peter—I’ll never forgive myself,” she cried miserably. “What induced me to be such an awful fool?”

  “My dear, you couldn’t help it. It was just one of those unfortunate accidents that might happen to anyone. And they’re not dead: only knocked out. Hugh is not as bad as Ronald, according to the doctor.”

  “Oughtn’t we to tell them about Mrs Merridick?”

  “What’s the good, dear? We’ve not got an atom of proof. We’ve got very strong suspicions but no more. And there’s no use getting a couple of village policemen unduly excited when it can’t do any good. Now you sit here while I go up and look at the two invalids.”

  He found Drummond tossing and moaning on his bed. His face was bandaged up and so was one hand, whilst every now and then he babbled incoherently. Standish lay quite motionless: only his faint breathing proclaimed that he was alive. And it was while he was with him that the doctor came in to say that the ambulance was at the door.

  “They will be far better in hospital,” he said. “In fact, it is essential they should be in a place where they can get skilled nursing.”

  “Far better,” agreed Darrell.

  From other points of view beside nursing, he reflected. When it was found that they were not dead it was more than likely that another attempt would be made to finish them off. And then an idea struck him.

  “Look here, Doctor,” he said, “I’d be very much obliged if you’d do something for me. You said downstairs that you had no idea when they would recover consciousness, didn’t you? Well, I wish you’d pile that on as thick as you can when the reporters begin to get busy. Say that you think it may be a question of weeks. We’re moving in deep waters, and if the bunch who did this show tonight think that even though they’re not dead, they’re safely out of the way for some time, it’ll be healthier for all concerned.”

  The doctor nodded.

  “Certainly,” he said. “And in doing so I shall not be stretching the truth at all. For it is my candid opinion that it will be a question of weeks, certainly in the case of Mr Standish. Are you going to remain here?”

  “For tonight at any rate,” answered Darrell. “And tomorrow morning I’ll come round to the hospital to see how they are.”

  He waited till the two men had been placed in the ambulance; then he rejoined Daphne Frensham in the lounge. A reporter who had arrived on the scene made a bee line for him, but Darrell waved him aside curtly.

  “Look here, dear,” he said, “we’ve got to think what we’re going to do. If, as I believe, it was the woman who called herself Mrs Merridick who did this, one thing is very clear. You can’t go back to Corinne Moxton, for they now know that you’re in touch with Drummond. Further, you won’t be safe in your own flat, for I assume she knows your address.”

  “No she doesn’t, Peter. She’s never asked me and I’ve never told her.”

  “Well, that’s one good thing, anyway. We must chance your being safe there. But about tonight. I suggest that we should take rooms here in the hope that Hugh may recover consciousness tomorrow. Then if he doesn’t, you go back to London and lie low, whilst I get Bill Leyton down here to look after Ronald.”

  “What are you going to do, Peter?”

  “Stay here, darling,” he said promptly. “Or perhaps go to an hotel in Bournemouth. I must be on hand the instant Hugh comes to, because there may be something to be done which he won’t be fit to tackle. And you see, the doctor can’t give me any idea how long he’s likely to remain like this. So I’ll go and book two rooms, and then I vote for a spot of bed. But for Heaven’s sake, my dear, lock your door: with this bunch you never know. I don’t think we’ll have any of ’em down here tonight, but one can’t be sure. Tomorrow, when it’s in all the papers, and they know that Hugh and Ronald aren’t dead, it will be a different matter. And that’s why I think I may go to Bournemouth with Bill Leyton.”

  “Peter,” she cried suddenly. “What about Ardington?”

  “Good Lord!” he said. “I’d forgotten all about it. Anyway, my dear, it’s too late to get there now. We’ll have to let Ardington take care of itself. Now, you pop off to bed: we’ll see what luck we have tomorrow with old Hugh.”

  But they had none, and when they left in the afternoon he was still babbling incoherently.

  “It’s hell,” said Darrell gloomily. “Supposing they have found out something, and don’t come round before it is too late. What’s the matter, dear?”

  For the girl had suddenly laid a hand on his arm.

  “Stop, Peter, and go back to that paper shop.” Her voice was urgent, and he glanced at her curiously. “There was a poster outside, and I’m sure I saw something.”

  He backed the car obediently, and then for a while they both sat staring at the placard in silence.

  GHASTLY TRAIN ACCIDENT AT ARDINGTON

  HUGE DEATH ROLL

  “Get a paper, Peter,” she said in a low voice.

  He bought two copies of the Evening Mail, and handed her one. And in flaming headlines they read the news.

  “APPALLING ACCIDENT TO EXPRESS

  TRAIN LEAVES RAILS WHEN TRAVELLING AT SIXTY MILES AN HOUR

  HEAVY LOSS OF LIFE

  “One of the most dreadful railway accidents of modern times occurred last night near the little village of Ardington, which for sheer majesty of horror as a spectacle can only have been equalled by the tragic loss of the ill-fated R101 when she crashed near Beauvais on her maiden trip to India. And a further parallel between the two disasters is that in both cases only one person appears to have seen it actually happen. I have just left the spectator of last night’s accident, and he is still almost dazed by what he saw. He is Mr Herbert, of Plumtree Farm, where he has lived for the last twenty years.

  “‘I had been up all night with a sick cow,’ he told me, ‘and was just leaving her to go back to bed when I heard the express approaching. It was coming through the cutting half a mile away, and I waited to see it pass. After the cutting there is an embankment on a bit of a curve, and the train came roaring round it. And then suddenly it happened. The engine seemed to leap into the air, and rush down the side of the embankment, followed by all the coaches. There was a crash such as I had never heard: everything seemed to pile up in a heap, and then there was silence for a moment or two. But not for long: such a pandemonium of screams and yells broke out as I wouldn’t have believed possible. The lights were still on, though some of the carriages seemed to be telescoped, and I could see the passengers climbing out of windows—those that weren’t dead. It was terrible: I shall never get it out of my head.’

  “So much for the only eye-witness’ account: now for some further details. The train was the night express from Scotland to London. It was travelling at full speed, but, according to the guard, John Harrison of Bexley, who is lying seriously injured in a neighbouring cottage, no faster than usual on that stretch of line. They were up to time, in fact a minute ahead of it, so that the accident took place about 4.15 a.m. And then the inexplicable thing occurred. The wheels of the engine left the rails, and the locomotive, owing to the curve, plunged down the embankment at sixty miles an hour, dragging the heavy train behind it. The driver and fireman were both killed, and up to date there is a death roll of thirty-five with seventy-one injured, several of them very seriously. Unfortunately, these figures by no means represent the total loss. A breakdown gang is at work, but several hours must elapse before some of the coaches can be lifted free of others into which they have been telescoped, and it is a regrettable certainty that when this is done many more casualties will be discovered.

  “I had a talk with Walter Marton, the attendant in the sleeping-car, who, by some miraculous stroke of luck, escaped with nothing worse than a shaking.

  “‘I was sitting in my seat reading,’ he said. ‘She was running as smoothly as usual, when suddenly she gave a terrific lurch, and I got flung into a heap of soiled linen. And the next thing I knew was that the coach was upside down. I climbed out throu
gh one of the windows.’

  “And that is one of the things which increases the horror of the spectacle: almost the whole of the train is upside down at the foot of the slope. Only the two rear coaches, one of which was the guard’s van, are still standing on their wheels, and in these no one was killed, though several passengers sustained fractures, and the guard himself was hurled from one end of his van to the other.”

  LATER.

  “The death roll in this ghastly tragedy has now reached forty-nine, and two coaches still remain telescoped. It is feared that the final count will number between sixty and seventy, since no one can possibly be alive in those two carriages. The gruesome task of identifying the victims is being carried out in the little concert hall of Ardington.”

  “But, Peter,” said the girl, and her face was as white as a sheet, “it’s unbelievable; it’s inconceivable. How did they know that this was going to happen?”

  He stared at her.

  “Know it was going to happen,” he repeated foolishly. “They can’t have known an accident was going to happen.”

  “But was it an accident, Peter?”

  “My God!” he muttered. “My God!” And fell silent, still staring at her dazedly.

  “What was the object, Daphne?” he said at length. “What can have been the object? My dear, you must be wrong. It was an accident.”

  “So that was why Parker wasn’t to drive,” she went on, as if he had not spoken. “What are we going to do about it, Peter?”

  “What can we do about it?” he said heavily, as he got back into the car. “A sentence heard through a keyhole isn’t much to go on. Their answer would be a flat denial that the words were ever spoken, or that they ever went there. And it’s impossible to prove that they did.”

  They drove on in silence, each busy with their own thoughts. Unbelievable; inconceivable, as she had said; and yet it was true. Right from the beginning she had mentioned Ardington: it was not as if she had not been sure and had thought of it after seeing the account in the paper. Even the time fitted in. It was true. For some diabolical reason the Scotch express had been wrecked, and Corinne Moxton and Pendleton had known it was going to happen and had been spectators.

  “Don’t say anything, Daphne dear,” he said, as they drew up at her flat. “You’ll do no good by speaking too soon. Our only chance is to let them think they’re not suspected. Then we may catch them.”

  He went round to his club, and the first thing that caught his eye was a headline in a later edition of the Evening Mail.

  “SENSATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN ARDINGTON DISASTER EVIDENCE OF FARM LABOURER

  “A sensational development has taken place in the Ardington disaster, where Colonel Mayhew, of the Home Office, has already opened the preliminary investigation. It appears that Mr Herbert was not the only eye-witness of the accident, but that George Streeter, a farm labourer employed at the neighbouring village of Bilsington, also saw it. He states that he was returning after a late dance to the cottage in which he lives, and was walking along the main Towchester road as the train left the cutting. This would mean that he was about two hundred yards from the actual scene of the disaster. And he affirms most positively that just before the engine left the rails, he saw what he describes as a sort of flash right in front of the wheels. Pressed by Colonel Mayhew to be more explicit, he said that it looked like a big yellow spark, and that it happened when the engine was four or five yards away. He heard nothing, but that is not surprising in view of the noise of the train and the direction of the wind. Too much importance should not be attached to his story, though when I interviewed him he struck me as being a reliable and unimaginative man. At the same time the possibilities that are opened up, should his statement be correct, are so inconceivably monstrous that it would be well to await further evidence before jumping to any conclusion. That anything in the nature of a bomb outrage should happen in this country seems utterly incredible. Unfortunately, the permanent way is so badly ploughed up for nearly a hundred yards that some considerable time must inevitably elapse before the final examination is concluded.”

  He laid down the paper: there was the proof. Naturally the reporter sounded a note of warning over believing such an incredible thing, but he did not know all the facts. Nobody did except Daphne and himself. And ceaselessly the question hammered at his brain—what ought he to do? Then another one took its place: what had been the object of such an apparently senseless outrage? Surely there was no man living, not even Pendleton, who would have done such a monstrous thing merely to gratify Corinne Moxton’s craving for cruelty and excitement.

  “Hullo! Peter. Seen the latest about the Ardington accident?”

  He looked up: Tim Maguire, a Major in the Royal Engineers, was standing by his chair.

  “You’re a Sapper, Tim,” he said. “How could a thing like that be done?”

  “Easy as falling off a log,” answered Maguire, “if anyone wanted to. You’ve only got to wedge a slab of gun-cotton or any other high explosive up against one of the rails and then fire it by electricity just before the train reaches the spot. By that means you cut the rail. But surely you don’t believe this labourer’s evidence, do you? The thing is preposterous.”

  He strolled away: just so—the thing was preposterous. And that is what everyone else would say if he told them what he knew.

  After a while he left the club, and getting into a taxi he went round to see Bill Leyton. He had ceased to care by now whether he was followed or not: everything, even the bomb outrage at the Falconbridge Arms, seemed to pale into insignificance beside this crowning infamy.

  He found Leyton in, and plunged into the story at once. “What ought one to do: that’s what has got to be decided,” he concluded.

  Leyton pushed over the whisky decanter.

  “I think what you told Miss Frensham is right, Darrell,” he said. “I don’t see that you can do anything merely on the strength of what she heard through the keyhole. Besides, it’s pretty obvious that even though they were spectators they were not the actual perpetrators of the crime.”

  “No; but they probably know who they were.”

  “More than likely; but they’re not going to give it away. They will simply say that they haven’t an idea what you are talking about, and that you must be mad. And if you persist, or go to the police, they will run you for libel. You see, all your information is second-hand; that’s the devil of it. We may know that it is true; but so long as Drummond and Standish are unconscious our hands are tied.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Darrell moodily. “Well, are you on for coming down to Bournemouth with me so as to be on the spot the instant we’re wanted?”

  “Sure: I’ll throw some kit into a bag now.”

  And that night found them installed at an hotel in the pine woods, where the average age of the clientele appeared to be in the early eighties. The period of weary waiting had begun. Three times daily did Darrell ring up the nursing-home for every evening he got through to Daphne to make sure she was still all right. And with incredible slowness the days dragged by, with No Change the invariable bulletin.

  The papers had unanimously discounted George Streeter’s statement, and since no confirmatory evidence appeared to be forthcoming from the examination of the debris, the Ardington disaster was universally regarded as simply being the most appalling accident of the century. The death roll had been published, and had reached the ghastly total of eighty-four, with seven more not expected to live.

  “And what beats me,” said Darrell, “is that they’re all absolutely unknown people. Hugh, I know, had an idea that there might be some political significance behind these swine’s activities, and it would be within the realms of comprehension if they had wrecked the train to kill one big man, regardless of the others. But there wasn’t a big man on the train: if there had been, and he had escaped, we should have heard all about it. But all these poor devils are just common or garden birds like you and me.”

 
“I know,” said Leyton. “That point had occurred to me. And there’s another thing too: if it was a terrorist action done by Communists or people of that sort to further their own ends, it fails in its entire object if the public believe it was only an accident. So surely, by some means or other, without giving themselves away, the men who did it would have let it be known that it was deliberate.

  “Which brings us back to our old starting-point, that the whole thing seems utterly and absolutely senseless.”

  It was Sunday morning, and they were sitting disconsolately in the lounge. Five wasted days, and nothing to show for them. And then, as so often happens, everything changed when they least expected it. A page-boy came up to them with a message that Darrell was wanted on the telephone by the Falconbridge hospital. And a minute later he was back.

  “Hugh’s conscious,” he said briefly. “Let’s get a move on.” They were met by the doctor.

  “Captain Drummond came to about an hour ago,” he said, “and is seemingly none the worse for it. But go easy with him.”

  They found Drummond sitting up in bed. He looked pale and drawn, but he grinned cheerfully when he saw them.

  “Hullo! chaps,” he said, “that was a close shave.”

  “How are you feeling, old boy?” cried Darrell.

  “Damned sore,” said Drummond. “And it hurts like hell to laugh. I gather my jaw took the drive first. But I’m still absolutely in the dark as to what happened. All I know is that I was standing by the open window, and there was suddenly a terrific explosion behind me. After that little Willie passed out.”

  “There’s a lot to tell you, Hugh, but before I begin I’ve got one question to ask. Did a grey-haired, middle-aged woman come into the sitting-room any time during the evening?”

  Drummond frowned thoughtfully.