asked.

"No. But I heard a door bang. I looked out, but I heard nothing. The
gentleman's quite right, though, about the two chaps scrambling in as we
pulled out of Harthborough."

The station-master turned to Dick with a face diffidently serious.

"I'm afraid you ought to wait here, sir," he said.

"I know I ought not. Duty's duty, and you can't keep me, my good
fellow," replied Dick, dredging the breast pocket of his coat and
producing and opening his cigarette-case. "Here's my card. The address
will always find me."

The station-master looked at the card, hesitating still, and turning it
about in his fingers.

"I can uncouple the through carriage," he said.

"And I can move my party to another," Dick blandly retorted. "And you'll
only inconvenience everybody up the line that meant to use it. See here,
man; I'm witness of what was possibly an accident. I give you the
information, and add my private opinion that it was something worse than
an accident. That's all. It's up to you to put your police on the job,
not to disturb a traveller that wasn't even in the man's compartment.
Ask this fellow here, who _was_ in it. Most likely he's got no ticket,
running it fine as they did at Harthborough. That'll give you reason
enough to make him miss the train while one of your men's fetching a
constable. And the constable won't let him out of sight till you've
found the other man, alive or dead. But he won't object to waiting,
unless he wants to rouse suspicion. Now I do object." And here Dick
laughed. "Why," he went on, "with your way of doing things, they'd have
to arrest a hundred witnesses every time a lorry ran into a lamp-post."

And he stood by, lighting his pipe, while the station-master attempted
to extract information from the man in overalls.

He proved docile enough; mumbled a halting tale of dozing in his corner
when his friend, leaning from the window, had been launched from the
train by the sudden opening of the door. Supposed it hadn't been
properly latched; his friend had been fooling with the lock a few
minutes before. No, there'd been no words--not to say quarrel; they'd
talked a bit--nothing more. Oh, yes, of course he'd get out and wait
over, and do his bit to help 'em find his chum--poor, silly blighter!

The man cast one sly side-glance at Dick, and thought he was not being
watched.

But Dick saw, and gathered from that one flash of the eye that this was
Pepe's "Heberto, the London man," and th