PLUME of smoke drifted under the great glass dome of Slagborough Station as the Northern Express came slowly to a standstill. It was getting late now, and the big station was almost deserted. The blue lamps picked out so that they of colour, as flare of the the lettering on the posters seemed to dance in an eddy seen through the half opaque curtain of fog which for the last two or three nights had lain over England like a pall. It was an unusual time, of year for a visitation of that kind, being nearly the end of March, in the last quarter of the moon, so that the nights had been very dark.
The express crept along the platform like a green-and-gold snake that is full of fire, for the electric lights were turned on, and here and there the blinds had not been lowered. Along the platform, almost alone, came the ticket collector, for this was the first stop since the express had left London, and no further examination of tickets would be made that side of Newcastle. The express in question was not a corridor train, but consisted of three Pullman cars and a number of first-class carriages. As the collector passed along from the engine downwards, he came at length to a compartment the blinds of which were drawn, so that it might have been assumed that the compartment in question was empty. But it was no business of the man on duty to assume anything of the sort, so he opened the door and mechanically uttered his parrot cry. The compartment was empty, except that one passenger was huddled up in a far corner, with his head upon his breast, as if he had lapsed into slumber. He was an elderly man, clean-shaven, and dressed in a suit of black—a business man, obviously, probably a merchant or something of that kind. Three times did the collector repeat the request, then he crossed the carriage and laid his hand on the sleeper's shoulder.
A moment later, white and shaken, he was racing down the platform in the direction of the guard's van. That individual, important in his blue and silver, was only waiting for the signal to start.
"Well, Joe," he said impatiently, "what is it?"
"I dunno," the ticket collector stammered. "But there's a passenger all by 'imself in a first-class carriage dahn there, and 'e's dead. Looks to me as if 'e'd bin murdered. There's blood all over 'is shirt-front an' on the floor. I goes in to ask 'im for 'is ticket, an' there I finds 'im as I'm telling you. Anyway, the pore chap's dead."
"Murdered be hanged!" the startled guard exclaimed. "That's impossible. Why, the train 'asn't stopped since we left London, an' there wasn't no murdered man in the train then, I'll take my oath. Besides which, if anybody'd murdered him, 'ow could 'e possibly 'ave left the train?"
"Well, then, 'e's murdered 'isself!" the ticket collector said hoarsely. "You come along an' see."
Now, time and express trains wait for no man, and it was only a few minutes before the compound engine was on its way again. The dead man had been removed, and, pending an inquest, the body had been locked up in one of the waiting-rooms. It was some days before any clue to the identity of the deceased was made public, and then it transpired that he was a certain Jabez Thornton, a comparatively well-known business man, who had an office in London, and who resided practically alone in a small house on the borders of Essex. A few more details came out at the inquest, but not many. To begin with, the dead man Thornton was travelling to Newcastle, as the ticket found in his pocket showed, and there was nothing with him in the way of luggage, not even so much as a hand-bag. He had joined the train in London, of course, and his ticket had been examined and clipped on the platform, previous to the departure of the train, in the ordinary way. There was nothing on the body besides a watch and chain and purse and a pocket-book containing a few letters addressed to Thornton in the ordinary way of business.