, holding out my hands to try and
get some warmth into them.

"It will take a good deal to persuade me to go down to the tunnel,
whatever I may see there," said the man. "I don't think, Mr. Bell, I am
a coward in any sense of the word, but there's something very uncanny
about this place, right away from the rest of the world. I don't wonder
one often hears of signalmen going mad in some of these lonely boxes.
Have you any theory to account for these deaths, sir?"

"None at present," I replied.

"This second death puts the idea of Pritchard being murdered quite out
of court," he continued.

"I am sure of it," I answered.

"And so am I, and that's one comfort," continued Henderson. "That poor
girl, Lucy Ray, although she was to be blamed for her conduct, is much
to be pitied now; and as to poor Wynne himself, he protests his
innocence through thick and thin. He was a wild fellow, but not the sort
to take the life of a fellow-creature. I saw the doctor this afternoon
while I was waiting for you at the inn, Mr. Bell, and also the police
sergeant. They both say they do not know what Davidson died of. There
was not the least sign of violence on the body."

"Well, I am as puzzled as the rest of you," I said. "I have one or two
theories in my mind, but none of them will quite fit the situation."

The night was piercingly cold, and, although there was not a breath of
wind, the keen and frosty air penetrated into the lonely signal-box. We
spoke little, and both of us were doubtless absorbed by our own thoughts
and speculations. As to Henderson, he looked distinctly uncomfortable,
and I cannot say that my own feelings were too pleasant. Never had I
been given a tougher problem to solve, and never had I been so utterly
at my wits' end for a solution.

Now and then the Inspector got up and went to the telegraph instrument,
which intermittently clicked away in its box. As he did so he made some
casual remark and then sat down again. After the 10.40 had gone through,
there followed a period of silence which seemed almost oppressive. All
at once the stillness was broken by the whirr of the electric bell,
which sounded so sharply in our ears that we both started. Henderson
rose.

"That's the 11.45 coming," he said, and, going over to the three long
levers, he pulled two of them down with a loud clang. The next moment,
with a rush and a scream, the express tore down the cutting, the
carriage lights streamed past in a rapid fla