Bluebolt One Read Free

I’ll stay here, then.”
    The guard glanced at the pathetic remains hanging on the rail and shuddered. Then he turned away. Shaw, watching the departing flicker of the torch, wondered briefly if he couldn’t have contacted Earls Court or Gloucester Road by phone from the train rather than walk back as he himself had suggested... but the guard must know his own job . . . he heard the footsteps clumping and echoing into the distance, and then there was silence and he was alone with the body in the total, subterranean dark. He shivered a little. The faint plopping noise as a drip of water fell from the invisible roof into a puddle on the track seemed like an explosion. Shaw fumbled in his pockets for a box of matches, lit one. Almost at once it blew out on the draught. He brought out his folded evening paper, twisted a half page into a spill and lit that, shielding the flame with his coat. He bent towards the still form on the track. In that uncertain, flickering light he examined the body again. Medium height, stoutish build, brown-haired, clean-shaven, an indentation on the bridge of the nose where spectacles had rested. Probably aged anywhere between thirty-five and forty. Fresh complexion, well-fed body. Somehow he didn’t look like a drinker, at any rate not an habitual one. He was quietly and fairly expensively dressed—his suit looked as if it had come from a Savile Row tailor, the shirt was of nylon. If it was suicide rather than drink, it was a funny way to do it. . . unless of course he’d gone berserk suddenly, felt, say, that he couldn’t face home any more—something like that? These things did happen, and he could have come to the end of his particular tether between Gloucester Road and Earls Court as well as anywhere else ... but the police would go into his background, of course, and it would all come out in time.
    The spill, the third spill by now, burnt out.
    Shaw waited on, his nerve-endings jumping and tingling, the potted air close and clammy on his skin. He waited longer than he’d thought he would have to, for Gloucester Road couldn’t be so very far back.
    Some ten minutes later he saw the lights—coming from the direction of Earls Court. Soon he heard tramping feet, and faint voices echoed, coming nearer. Then, in the loom of big lamps, he saw a line of uniform caps and a bowler hat.
    He got up and walked along the track. A beam caught him and an edgy voice called truclently, “What’s going on here, eh?”
    Shaw didn’t like the tone. He called back, “A man’s been killed—or didn’t you know?”
    “What!” Another beam joined the first, flickered into Shaw’s eyes, then swept him from head to foot. The light turned away and there was a shocked ejaculation as the man bent and looked at the body. Behind the light Shaw made out a heavily built man with a big grey moustache and an air of authority.
    Shaw said, “You’ve heard the guard’s report, surely?”
    “No, I haven’t.” The man straightened. “Who’re you?”
    “The name’s Shaw, Commander Shaw.” He explained in detail what had happened. The man tilted his bowler to the back of his head, rubbed his forehead which was streaked with sweat and dirt.
    He said gruffly, “Well, this is a right lark, this is. No one reported anything, far as I know. Driver contacted Earls Court, said the guard had stopped the train and he didn’t know why... the guard, ’e said, didn’t answer on the intercom, all ’e said was to get the current off, like, and then ’e went off the line. Driver asked us if ’e should leave the train and take a look. We said no, to stay where ’e was. Then we came along—” He broke off. “How long ago did the guard leave you?”
    “Twenty minutes, roughly.”
    “That’d give ’im plenty of time to get to Gloucester Road and report.” The man brushed a hand along his cheek. “Funny . . . wouldn’t ’ave ’opped it, not Jackson.”
    Shaw said, “I wonder if he’s passed out on the line.