ent we were looking down
upon the scene of the mysterious deaths, and a weird and lonely place it
looked. The tunnel was at one end of the rock cutting, the sides of
which ran sheer down to the line for over a hundred and fifty feet.
Above the tunnel's mouth the hills rose one upon the other. A more
dreary place it would have been difficult to imagine. From a little
clump of pines a delicate film of blue smoke rose straight up on the
still air. This came from the chimney of the signal-box.

As we started to descend the precipitous path the Inspector sang out a
cheery "Hullo!" The man on duty in the box immediately answered. His
voice echoed and reverberated down the cutting, and the next moment he
appeared at the door of the box. He told us that he would be with us
immediately; but we called back to him to stay where he was, and the
next instant the Inspector and I entered the box.

"The first thing to do," said Henderson the Inspector, "is to send a
message down the line to announce our arrival."

This he did, and in a few moments a crawling goods train came panting up
the cutting. After signalling her through we descended the wooden flight
of steps which led from the box down to the line and walked along the
metals towards the tunnel till we stood on the spot where poor Davidson
had been found dead that morning. I examined the ground and all around
it most carefully. Everything tallied exactly with the description I had
received. There could be no possible way of approaching the spot except
by going along the line, as the rocky sides of the cutting were
inaccessible.

"It is a most extraordinary thing, sir," said the signalman whom we had
come to relieve. "Davidson had neither mark nor sign on him--there he
lay stone dead and cold, and not a bruise nowhere; but Pritchard had an
awful wound at the back of the head. They said he got it by climbing the
rocks--here, you can see the marks for yourself, sir. But now, is it
likely that Pritchard would try to climb rocks like these, so steep as
they are?"

"Certainly not," I replied.

"Then how do you account for the wound, sir?" asked the man with an
anxious face.

"I cannot tell you at present," I answered.

"And you and Inspector Henderson are going to spend the night in the
signal-box?"

"Yes."

A horrified expression crept over the signalman's face.

"God preserve you both," he said; "I wouldn't do it--not for fifty
pounds. It's not the first time I have h