by Miles Burton
“I hadn’t gone far, in fact I’d just taken my hand off the whistle, when I thought I saw a red light ahead of me. I shut off steam at once, although I didn’t see how it could be a light. I thought it must be another train coming towards me, steaming hard, and that the blast had driven a red coal through the funnel. But there the light was, and it seemed to be moving. So I clapped on the brake, and called to my mate to look. He saw the light as plain as I did, and we both knew that something was up.
“Well, sir, you can’t pull up a heavy train like you can a motor-car, and I thought we were for it. I couldn’t judge how far off the light might be, and I was afraid we should be on top of it before we could stop. But it was farther away than I thought, and a very bright light it must have been for me to catch sight of it all that distance away. And as we got closer, I could see that it was swinging slowly from side to side, a foot or so above rail level, just as if somebody was holding it at arm’s length and swinging it. But it was a brighter light than any railway lantern I’ve ever known. Or maybe it seemed bright to me because I was afraid of running into it before I could stop.”
“Did you form any idea of what the light could mean?” Arnold asked.
“I hadn’t much time to form ideas, sir. My job was to get the train stopped. Something was amiss ahead, and there was the light to warn me. Well, sir, I managed to get the train in hand, and saw that I could pull up before I reached the light. And then, all at once, it changed to green, which means all clear, sir.”
“How far from the light were you when this happened?”
“It’s hard to say, sir. Maybe a hundred yards. Rather more, perhaps, certainly not less. So I took off the brakes, and let the steam into the cylinders again.”
“Whereabout in the tunnel were you by this time?”
“Just about the middle, sir. I whistled to show that I’d seen the green light. And then I saw that the chap who was swinging it must have been standing between the up and the down lines.”
“Did you see the man himself?”
“No, sir, it was too dark for that. But the light was swinging between the two sets of rails, so the man must have been standing there. And he turned off his lantern altogether just before I reached him.”
“You mean that the green light disappeared?”
“That’s right, sir. I tried to see the chap as I passed him, but my own steam was coming down round about the cab by then, and I couldn’t see anything. And though my mate hollered, the chap didn’t answer, or if he did we didn’t hear him. And that’s the truth, sir. It’s no good telling me that there was nobody in the tunnel, for I know there was. Else how could those lights have been there?”
Arnold was evidently impressed by the driver’s circumstantial description. “All right, Prentice, I believe you,” he said. “You might send Haynes in here, will you? I’d like to hear what he’s got to say about it.”
The fireman confirmed his companion’s story in every detail. Arnold did his best to find some discrepancy in the two accounts, but failed completely. Haynes was as ready to swear to the presence of the lights as Prentice had been. “And it seemed to me, sir, that the light didn’t come from one of they ordinary lanterns,” he added.
“What made you think that?” Arnold asked.
“Well, you see, sir, the lights was too bright, for one thing. We must have been half a mile or more away from the red light when Bob shut off steam. When he first saw it, that was, you understand. And, though there wasn’t as much steam in the tunnel as usual, it was still a bit hazy. You wouldn’t see an ordinary lantern as far as that. And, for another thing, the light didn’t seem to shine in one direction, like a lantern does. It showed all round, like.”
“And yet you couldn’t see the man who was holding it?”
“No, sir, and that seemed queer to me at the time. For, if the light showed all round, it ought to have shone on him so that we could see him. At least, that’s what I make out, sir.”
“And you make out quite right, it seems to me. All right, Haynes, that’ll do. I’m much obliged to you.”
The fireman departed, and Arnold turned to Merrion. “Well, what do you make of it?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Merrion replied. “Those two fellows are telling the truth, any one could see that. They couldn’t have made up a yarn like that, and stuck to it under your cross-examination. The lights were there, right enough. But what were they there for, and who showed them? We’ve got to have a look inside that tunnel, I can see that.”
“Yes, and we’ve got to satisfy ourselves how much can really be seen from the signal-boxes. I’ve been having a look at the calendar. On Thursday the sun set at 4.11, and the moon didn’t rise till after eight. The train entered the tunnel at half-past five, or very soon after. The man can’t have got into the tunnel much after quarter past, if those chaps saw the lights about the middle of it. But it would be pretty dark by then. He must have managed to slip past one of the signal-boxes unobserved, whatever the station-master says.”
“It’s a most extraordinary business, and I don’t begin to understand it. Let’s see your friend the station-master, and arrange for a personally conducted tour. But I’ll admit that the prospect doesn’t exactly fill me with rapture.”
The station-master, still sceptical, put them in charge of a ganger, and the three began to walk towards the northern end of the tunnel. The cutting leading to it began almost immediately beyond Blackdown Station, and ran through the solid chalk. The walls of the cutting were very nearly vertical, and would have afforded a precarious foothold, even to an experienced rock-climber in daylight. In the dark, the ascent or descent would have been impossible. And unless it was dark, any one attempting it would have been in full view from the platforms of Blackdown Station.
“If any one got into the tunnel from this end, they must have walked along the line from the station, the same as we are doing,” said Arnold. “Well, that wouldn’t be impossible in the dark. But could they have got past the signal-box unobserved? That’s the point.”
The signal-box, when they reached it, proved to be within a few yards of the entrance to the tunnel. The wall of the cutting had been recessed to receive it, and the box, which was fronted with glass, looked across to the opposite wall. The signalman, whom they visited, explained that at night both tracks were brightly illuminated by the lights within the box. He had himself been on duty from two to six in the afternoon on the previous Thursday. The evening had been clear, and the atmospheric conditions such that the entrance of the tunnel had been free from smoke. He was absolutely certain that nobody could have passed his box without being seen. Arnold and Merrion, seeing the conditions, were inclined to agree with him.
Then came the exploration of the tunnel itself. Up till now there had been a path beside the down line, which, though uncomfortably close to the trains as they roared past, still afforded a measure of safety. But, at the entrance of the tunnel, the path ended. Thence it was necessary to walk on the permanent way, keeping a sharp look-out for trains, taking to the down line if an up train was heard, and vice versa. Here and there within the tunnel were refuges, caves dug out of the wall in which the three of them could barely crouch. More than once they were forced to seek shelter in one of these, when both an up and down train approached them simultaneously.
The atmosphere was, in any case, positively suffocating, though the ganger assured them that conditions were exceptionally favourable. “Why, in some weathers you can’t see a flare a dozen yards away,” he said. “It’s tricky work then, I can tell you, gentlemen. You’ve got to keep your wits about you, for you know the drivers can’t see you any more than you can see them. And as to breathing, you’ve got to take a mouthful of air when you can, and think yourself lucky to get that.”
They had a mild taste of this when a heavy goods train came through, steaming hard against the gradient. A torre
nt of red sparks poured from the funnel of the engine, and they understood Prentice’s first supposition on seeing the red light. As the engine passed them, the whirl of disturbed air seemed to snatch them in an endeavour to drag them under the wheels. Then, immediately they were enveloped in a warm clinging murk of steam and sulphurous smoke. The hot cinders descended on the backs of their necks, the trucks roared and clanged past within a few inches of them. Not until the train had passed and the air had cleared a little did they venture to leave the refuge in which they had taken shelter.
Arnold and Merrion had provided themselves with powerful torches, with which they inspected the floor and sides of the tunnel. But the most careful search revealed nothing among the grime and cinders which covered everything but the rails themselves. They had asked the ganger to tell them when they reached the middle of the tunnel, but it seemed an age before he did so. And here their search became even more meticulous than before. Slowly they pursued their way, examining every square inch between the intervals of dodging the passing trains.
The ganger watched their persistence with an amused tolerance. “You’re giving yourselves a lot of trouble for nothing, gentlemen,” he said. “I don’t care what that driver and fireman say. There was nobody in the tunnel on Thursday evening, as I know well enough. Why, how could he have got in or out? You’re seeing things for yourselves, now, and it ought to be as plain to you as it is to me.”
They were inclined to agree with him. And yet, unless some supernatural explanation could be imagined, how was the presence of the lights to be accounted for? That Prentice and Haynes had actually seen them, neither Arnold nor Merrion had any doubt, despite the incredulity of the local railwaymen.
Still they plodded on, and, as they did so, the atmosphere seemed to get worse, and the sulphurous fumes more suffocating. Merrion remarked upon this. “The air wasn’t quite so bad just now,” he said. “And yet you say we’re past the middle of the tunnel, where one would expect it to be at its worst. How do you account for that?”
“It’s always so,” the ganger replied. “You see, there’s a ventilating shaft about the middle. We’re fifty or sixty yards beyond it now. The air will get worse again for a bit, then better as we get towards the southern end. Hallo, I believe your friend’s found something. Look out, sir! That’s the whistle of a down train coming.”
Arnold had devoted his attention to the down line, while Merrion had kept his directed on the up. At the ganger’s warning, he hastily stepped across to the up line. “There’s something there, between the rails,” he said. “Something that reflected the light of my torch. I distinctly saw it glitter. We’ll have a look when this confounded train is past.”
The train roared past them, and it was a minute or two before the reek which it left in its wake cleared sufficiently to allow anything to be seen. And then, between the rails of the down line, Merrion saw something glittering. Arnold went forward and picked it up. It was a curved fragment of thin red glass.
This find led to others of a similar nature. As they advanced, step by step, other fragments of glass appeared in the light of their torches. Each of these they picked up, to find that some were red and others green. It was left to Merrion to make the final discovery. Close to the side of the tunnel, and lying on the ground three or four yards apart, he found two brass electric lamp-holders, badly dented and with the porcelain interiors smashed to atoms, but each with a few inches of flexible cord still attached to it. From their comparative cleanliness it was easy to see that they had not lain in the tunnel for very long.
“Well, that settles it,” said Arnold. “There are the lights that Prentice and Haynes saw, or rather the remains of them.” He turned to the ganger. “How do you account for these? Do your men use red and green electric lights when they are working in here?”
The ganger shook his head. “Not that kind, anyhow,” he replied. “The only way they can have got here is for somebody to have dropped them from a train. You’d be surprised if you could see some of the things that passengers do drop in tunnels.”
“I dare say they drop all kinds of queer things,” said Arnold. “But, all the same, I don’t believe that these were dropped from a train. I believe they were brought in here by somebody, and thrown down when he had finished with them.”
“Well, sir, you must have it your own way, I suppose,” replied the ganger, quite unconvinced. “We’d best be moving along. Perhaps one of you gentlemen will find the chap you’re after still hiding in one of the refuges.”
They paid no attention to this sarcastic observation, but resumed their march in silence. But, in spite of redoubled watchfulness, they found no more. At last, a faint glimmer of daylight indicated the southern end of the tunnel. Before very long they were once more in the open air.
Merrion drew several deep breaths, cleansing his lungs of the fumes he had inhaled. “My word!” he exclaimed. “That confounded tunnel must be as near an approach to hell as human ingenuity can devise. My classics are getting a bit rusty, but wasn’t it Hercules who went down into the infernal regions to rescue his pal’s wife? Alcestis, that was the girl’s name! I never realised before what a plucky chap he must have been. A dozen distressed damsels wouldn’t tempt me into that tunnel again. And here’s the other signal-box we heard about, I suppose?”
Conditions at the southern end of the tunnel were very similar to those at the northern end. A deep cutting, with vertical walls, and a signal-box commanding the entrance. Here, too, the signalman was positive that nobody could enter or leave the tunnel unobserved.
Arnold looked at his watch. It had taken them nearly two hours to traverse the two and a half miles of the tunnel.
VII
The ganger, to whom tunnels were all part of the day’s work, went back to Blackdown by the way he had come. Arnold and Merrion, however, preferred a less hazardous, if longer, route. They made their way across the fields to a neighbouring main road, where they caught a bus. They were back at Scotland Yard shortly after six o’clock.
Arnold laid upon the table the fragments which they had collected in the tunnel, and together they examined them. From their shape, it was easy to see that the bits of coloured glass were all that remained of two electric light bulbs, one red and the other green. The lamp-holders were of the ordinary type, and the flexible cord likewise. There was nothing distinctive about these.
“So there was a man in the tunnel, after all,” said Arnold at last. “I can’t imagine, after what we’ve seen this afternoon, how he got there. It’s ridiculous to suppose that he bribed the signalmen not to see him. He had those two lamps with him, and he switched on the red one first, then, when the train had slowed down sufficiently, he switched on the green. He wouldn’t want the train to come to a stop, for then investigations would have been made by the train-staff. He would have been found, and made to give some explanation of what he was up to.”
Merrion nodded. “Those lamps prove that Prentice and Haynes are speaking the truth. If they were unshaded, they would show a light all round, instead of in one direction only, as a lantern does. And a powerful electric lamp, such as these appear to have been, would be visible a lot farther than an ordinary railway lantern. As a guess, after seeing the conditions in that infernal tunnel, I should think that to be seen at a distance of half a mile, the lamps must have been of at least a hundred candle-power each. And that raises an even bigger problem than how the chap got into the tunnel.”
“Well, let’s have it,” said Arnold. “One problem more or less won’t make much difference.”
“Here you are, then. Electric lamps don’t produce light of themselves. They have to be supplied with current. Where did the chap get his current from? There’s no electric supply main running through the tunnel, you know.”
“I’m well aware of that. The man carried a battery with him, of course. Just as we carry batteries in our torches.”
Merrion sho
ok his head. “The lamps in our torches aren’t a hundred candle-power, or anything like it. Being quite small, they take very little current, and a small battery is enough to supply it. But to supply current for these lamps nothing lighter than a fair-sized motor-car battery would do. Have you ever tried carrying one of them about? They’re devilish heavy, I can tell you. It would be a terrific feat to carry one into the middle of the tunnel and out again.
“Yet, by using ordinary household bulbs, this man deliberately saddled himself with the necessity for such a battery. Why did he use that kind of lamp? A couple of large-sized torches, or even one, with a movable red and green screen fitted to it, would have done just as well. By means of a lens and reflector a torch is made to give as much light as one of these lamps. But this is done by concentrating the light in one direction only. The only possible reason for using ordinary lamps, with their much greater expenditure of current, would be to obtain the advantage of the light showing all round. But, in heaven’s name, why should this chap have wanted that?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” Arnold replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Your imagination is leading you away from the point. What reason the chap may have had for using lamps instead of torches can’t possibly matter. Here are the lamps, or what’s left of them. That’s sufficient proof to me that the chap used them, and that he had with him a source of current from which to light them up. And when he’d done with them, he chucked them aside in the tunnel. So much is plain enough.”
Merrion picked up the bits of flexible cord and examined them intently. “Our friend’s proceedings strike me as bordering on the insane,” he said. “He burdens himself with a cumbrous battery, when a far lighter torch would have served him equally well. When he has finished with his apparatus, he throws away the lightest part, and keeps the heaviest. For he certainly didn’t leave the battery in the tunnel, or we should have found it. And he doesn’t just disconnect his flexible. He breaks it violently, as you can see for yourself if you look at it.”