Death on the Last Train Read Free

the apparatus giving up the ghost entirely.
    The train began slowly to move again.
    Guard and driver had mounted once more and the clanking contraption crawled painfully to the cabin, where, after a shouted consultation, the signalman give them the all-clear to Salton.
    Salton station was cold and desolate, and the remaining staff bad tempered.
    â€œWhere’ve you been?” snarled the stationmaster as the train staggered to a standstill.
    Ted Drake explained, not too graciously.
    â€œWell, I’ll be damned!” said the official. “What next? I never ’eard the likes of it. Well, come on. . . Get crackin’. Shut them doors and let’s be seein’ the last of you all.”
    The Rev. Beaglehole was first off the train. The initial fine alcoholic rapture had worn thin, and he wondered what his wife would say at the late hour. . .
    The munition workers held an inquest into the delay and, having wrung an explanation from the guard, cursed the railways, showed their passes and went into the rainy night. The Good Samaritans noisily dispersed after avolley of “Good-nights.” Harold Claypott, shaken from sleep by the guard, seemed more sober and was able to make his unsteady way home under his own power. He was a bachelor, living with two maiden sisters. He was in a vile temper when he reached his destination and found them both in bed, and he took his usual mean revenge on them. Unsteadily taking a match from his pocket he lighted the fires laid ready for morning in the kitchen and dining-room and then, leaving his wet macintosh at the foot of the stairs, reeled up to bed and fell asleep in his underclothes and dirty shoes.
    At Salton station Littlejohn again thrust out his head.
    â€œWhere are we?”
    â€œSalton, sir. Ellinborne next stop.”
    Sid Grimes, the porter, always made a point of looking in the empty first-class compartments before the train left. He had once found a shilling in one of them and, on another occasion, a half-crown thriller, so he kept up the habit with hope in his breast.
    Grimes peeped in the hutch recently left by the Beaglehole and drew a blank. Then he opened the next door.
    Sid reeled back a pace and broke into a run towards the stationmaster.
    â€œMr. Blades, Mr. Blades,” he panted. “Just come here. They’s a dead body in the first-class. . .”
    â€œGet away with yer,” replied his boss, tartly. “You been seeing things.”
    But he followed Grimes, all the same.
    Littlejohn was there already with the guard.
    â€œStand aside … stand clear,” shouted Mr. Blades officiously. He was a small, thin, emaciated man with codfish eyes, a huge moustache, loose limbs and enormous hands and feet. “Oo are you?” he asked Littlejohn.
    Littlejohn explained and showed his warrant-card. Mr. Blades carefully perused the free pass given to Littlejohn by a friendly picture-house manager in Hampstead, contained in the other side of the warrant-case and, in the heat of the moment, seemed quite satisfied.
    â€œWot ’ad we better do, sir?”
    â€œSend for the local police at once and hold the train until they arrive. Don’t any of you touch anything.”
    â€œEdward! Edward!!” bawled the stationmaster, as though beginning a popular and famous Scottish tragic ballad.
    The booking clerk emerged from sorting and locking-up his tickets in his lair.
    â€œSend for the police at once, Edward. Try to get Mister Forrester, the Chief Constable. Tell ’im we found a man shot through the ’ead on the eleven-four in … an’ he’s dead. Say that they’s a Scotland Yard detective already on the case. Got that, Edward? Well, get cracking!”
    And with a large paw Mr. Blades dismissed him like a football referee sending a guilty player from the field.
    Timothy Bellis lay among the dirt and fag-ends on the floor of his compartment, with a revolver near his hand and a hole in his temple.
    A