Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,102

fray. Perhaps he may be safe, once he leaves England.”

“We have time to save him. Unless they choose to settle accounts with him in Simla or on board the Himalaya. I think that is unlikely. They may do it at their leisure, though one must never underrate the sheer spite of such people. As for the story he might tell of Captain Brenton Carey’s death, they must believe he has told it already, as is the case. So, my dear fellow, it is you and I alone who must now account for Colonel Moran.”

Now I was quite prepared to tell him of my encounter with the colonel in the Hall of Mirrors at Epsom; but he seemed pressed for time just then, and the incident appeared less important. It could wait until after dinner.

It was a relief to be excused the duty of acting as nursemaid to Putney-Wilson. Holmes was to be otherwise engaged that day, and I felt unexpectedly liberated. The Army and Navy Club, to which I had belonged since the day of my first military commission, stands in St. James’s Square just off Piccadilly. It is quite as selective in its way as the Diogenes. A serving officer who wishes to become a member must find a proposer and a seconder. He may be blackballed during the election by any member who knows of something to his discredit. No reason for this need be given, and the objector’s identity is not revealed.

From time to time, when I am out and about in London, I take lunch with a friend at the Army and Navy by appointment. On other days I go alone and chance “pot luck” at a large round communal table at the centre of the dining-room. Those who are unaccompanied may dine together there for the sake of gossip.

Preoccupied by our present investigation, I had not been near the club for two or three weeks. It was time to show my face again. Even so, it was perhaps best not to travel alone in a cab. There is safety in numbers, and it is really just as convenient to take a first-class ticket on the underground railway, which people had begun to refer to as the “tube.” To travel to St. James’s Park from the Metropolitan station at the junction of Baker Street and the Euston Road was direct enough.

I walked along the busy pavement at my leisure and down the steps to the platform from the station booking-hall. I had only to wait for the next oncoming train to rumble out of the sooty brick arch of the tunnel into the brown glazed vaulting of the station. When one is travelling underground, Baker Street appears to be the centre of the civilised world. There is a line running east and a line running west, both of which end here. The stationary trains then stand side by side until the moment of their departure in reverse directions. This system is said to be the best for preventing collisions—and so it seems to be. Trains waiting at preceding stations do not leave their platforms until the electric telegraph signals that the space at Baker Street is “vacant.”

There were trains waiting at either platform as I came down the steps and took my seat in a carriage of the westbound departure, which would be the second to leave. After a moment or two, I glanced up at the window of the adjacent eastbound train a few feet away from me. A blast on the guard’s whistle would signal its departure in due course. My thoughts were far away from that adjacent carriage window, two or three feet distant. I was roused unaccountably by an open newspaper which a passenger sitting on that other train was reading. I could not see the face of the reader, or anything other than a man’s hands holding the pages open as he read. The black headline was plain in its large bold type: VICTORIA MANSIONS MURDER.

What did it mean? It was a bizarre situation. I could see the headline well enough but I could not communicate with that other reader nor attract his attention. He and I were as isolated in adjacent trains as goldfish in two separate bowls. Had there been a second murder in the mansion blocks? Or was it merely a statement by Scotland Yard of some new development in the mysterious case of Joshua Sellon? It was neither. Though the columns of newsprint were too small to