Mystery in White. J. Jefferson Farjeon
“Don’t mention.” He turned to Mr. Maltby. “Did you happen to see into the compartment next to ours, by any chance?”
“Which one?” inquired Mr. Maltby. “There were two. The one you were sitting back to?”
“Yes! How did you guess?”
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you. No, I didn’t see into it.”
“Did any of the rest of you?”
They shook their heads.
“Ah! Well, you were spared something. At least—well, that depends on—on the time it——”
He stopped, and glanced again at Jessie. Her wide blue eyes were apprehensive.
“Wonder if I’d better go on,” he muttered.
“I think you had,” replied the old man. “If it is self-defensive to joke, it is also self-defensive to get used to shocks. The shock you are about to give us is unlikely to be our last.”
“Oh, you know I’m going to give you a shock, then?”
“There is nothing occult in my perception of that.”
“Perhaps you know what the shock is?” exclaimed the bore, stiffening suddenly.
“My dear sir,” remonstrated Mr. Maltby, “do not look at me as though I were a murderer! I did not kill the person in the next compartment.”
The bore became limp again as Jessie stifled a little shriek. He flopped back in his chair, and gave another mop to his face with the towel.
“Who—who told you—any one had been killed?” he gasped.
“You did,” answered Mr. Maltby smoothly. “Emotions very highly developed frequently render words unnecessary. They progress along an ever-narrowing path, until at their peak they cease to be personal and achieve a universal aspect. We in this room merely appear to be different from each other when engaged on small concerns, but when we are fundamentally affected—with horror, love, excessive pain, excessive bliss—we are all the same.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” muttered the bore.
“Homicide,” replied Mr. Maltby. “Who is this person who has been killed?”
“Oh, you don’t know that?”
“I would not ask if I did.”
“Well, I don’t know either. I mean, just some fellow or other. The guard found him. As a matter of fact I was out in the corridor when he came along—the guard—and I asked him a question, but he didn’t answer. When I repeated it, he still didn’t answer, and I found him staring into the compartment, so I joined him, and there was this man, lying on the ground—dead.”
“Look here, hadn’t we better have the rest of this later?” interrupted Lydia, glancing at Jessie, whose eyes were dilating.
But Jessie herself protested against a postponement.
“Why does everybody think I can’t stand anything?” she demanded. “It’s only my foot that keeps on twinging! Please go on!”
“I don’t know that there’s much more to go on about,” answered the bore. “He was dead, and you can’t bring a dead man to life again.”
“Did you find out how he had been killed?” inquired Mr. Maltby.
“No.”
“Have you any theory?”
“Is this an inquest?”
“Were there any signs of a struggle?”
“I don’t know! I’m not a detective!”
“Detectives are not the only people with opinions. What did the guard think? Or do? Or say? I don’t suppose you both stood there and played ‘Buzz’?”
“Look here, I want to forget it!” retorted the bore. “Can’t you see, I’m nearly dead myself? How do I know what the guard thought? All I know is that we soon had a crowd round us, and—and that while they were all staring and gaping, it seemed to me we wanted a policeman.”
His tone took on a little flourish of triumph, as though he had suddenly justified himself in a company of doubters.
“I see,” nodded the old man. “And that’s why you left the train.”
“That’s it.”
“While we sought a railway station, you sought a police station.”
“Couldn’t put it more neatly myself.”
“Only you mentioned the word ‘escape.’ ”
“Eh?”
“ ‘I left the train to escape another hell of a time.’ That was your expression.”
“What are you getting at?” exclaimed the bore.
“I don’t know that I am ‘getting at’ anything,” replied Mr. Maltby, rather acidly, “but I suggest that, when you are telling a story of some importance you choose your words a little more carefully. Whether you actually left the train to assist the situation or to escape from it probably makes only a spiritual difference, for we may assume the material result would have been the same in either case, but in judging a man his point of view is more important than his action. Your own action, sir, unless the guard asked you to go for the police, or unless there is some vital factor of which we have not been informed, seems to have been definitely idiotic.”
The bore glared.
“If you mean that it was idiotic to face this damned weather——!” he began.
“No, I did not mean that,” interrupted Mr. Maltby. “I meant that a man in the next compartment is found dead, and you promptly leave the train.”
“Come to that, we all left the train,” said David.
“Thank you,” muttered the bore. “So we all had a hand in it and that’s settled!” He jumped up from his chair nervily, and then sat down again. “Look here, I feel dizzy. I’ve been nearly buried alive! If I’m not in for pneumonia, my name’s not Hopkins!”
Thomson sneezed.
“Hallo, some one else getting pneumonia?” queried Hopkins.
“I should think we’ll all get pneumonia,” added Lydia. “Isn’t that what inevitably happens when cold clothes dry on a numb body? I feel like hot ice!”
“So do I!” murmured Jessie.
“I’m sure you do. David, do you think you could carry her again? Upstairs, this time. And perhaps you could manage our suitcases, Mr. Thomson without a p. I don’t care what anybody says, we’re going to find a nice warm bedroom, and we’re going to get properly rubbed down and dry!”
CHAPTER VI
SNEEZES OBLIGATO
A few minutes later David descended the stairs and found Mr. Edward Maltby alone in the lounge-hall.
Lydia’s suggestion to make use of a bedroom had been seized on by Mr. Hopkins, who had declared that if the ladies were going to get dry there was no reason why he shouldn’t, and who had followed them up. Then he had added to the unpopularity of his move by waiting to see which room David carried Jessie into, and promptly commandeering the room adjoining. Meanwhile Thomson, anxious to earn good marks, was sneezing and washing up in the kitchen.
“Aren’t you afraid of pneumonia, sir?” David asked Mr. Maltby.
“I