Beware of the Trains Read Online Free PDF Page A

head. For perhaps two minutes he remained staring, mute and motionless, into the amber depths of his glass…
    And then, suddenly, he chuckled.
    “Rather nice, yes,” he said. “Tell me, were the spent cart ridges ever found?”
    “No. At the time, of course, we didn’t bother about them. But Jourdain was hunting for them yesterday, and he couldn’t find them anywhere.”
    Fen’s amusement grew. “Nor will he ever, I imagine—unless your Colonel Garstin-Walsh is a hopeless blunderer.”
    “But how are they important? I don’t see—”
    “Don’t you?” Fen lit a cigarette and reached for an ashtray. “I should imagine, myself, that they’re important for the reason that one of them is a blank.”
    “A blank?” Humbleby’s face was very much that.
    And Fen roused himself, speaking more energetically. ‘You’ll agree that Garstin-Walsh obviously possessed blanks; no man in his senses starts races at the village sports with live ammunition.”
    “Yes, I agree about that.”
    “And two of the shots he fired at you smashed things, so they were real enough. But what happened to the third?”
    Humbleby was anything but stupid; after a moment’s reflection he nodded abruptly. “If that third shot was a blank,” he said, “then that would mean… No, wait. I see what you’re getting at, but I can’t quite work it out for the moment. So go on.”
    “We’re assuming, remember, that Garstin-Walsh got rid of those cartridge-cases advisedly—that he wasn’t in fact, the maniac he seemed. Now, it’s possible to conceive quite a number of solid reasons for his acting as he did; but so far as my deductions have gone, there’s only one of them that covers all the facts. A blank cartridge is recognisably different from a live one. Let’s take it, then, that the spent shells were thrown away in order to conceal the presence of a blank among them, in case either you or Jourdain should be curious enough to investigate the gun. What follows? Quite simply, the fact that Garstin-Walsh fired two live shots and a blank at you. And if he did that, it can only have been because Jourdain was just about to examine the study, and there was a bullet-hole in the wall which had to be accounted for somehow.
    “Now, there was no bullet-hole in the wall prior to the Brebner shooting; if there had been, the painters would have found it and repaired it. So what would have happened if Garstin-Walsh hadn’t staged his shooting act with you? Jourdain, finding a bullet-hole in the wall, would have reasoned thus:
    “‘This hole must be the result of the single shot Garstin—Walsh fired at Brebner last night.
    “‘It can’t have been made subsequently, because Brebner and the nurse were in here all night.
    “‘Therefore when Garstin-Walsh fired at Brebner he missed.
    “‘But there is a bullet from Garstin-Walsh’s revolver lodged in Brebner’s skull.
    “‘Therefore Garston-Walsh must have shot Brebner earlier on, before he returned here and met Weems.
    “‘And that doesn’t look much like self-defence; it looks like murder.’
    “That Brebner was blackmailing Garstin-Walsh is obvious enough. It’s obvious, too, that Garstin-Walsh decided he must put a stop to it. So as I see it, he must have shot Brebner after Brebner left The Three Crowns, have gone to the cottage to remove whatever evidence of misappropriation of Army supplies Brebner was using, and have then returned to his house. He’d shot Brebner in the skull, and so naturally assumed that he was dead, but—”
    “Yes, that’s the difficulty,” Humbleby interposed. “The idea of a man with a bullet in his brain rushing about with a shotgun intent on vengeance—”
    “Oh come, Humbleby.” Fen was mildly shocked. “It’s not common, I grant you, but there are plenty of cases on record, John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, is one. Gross and Taylor and Sydney Smith quote others. Brain injuries don’t kill at once, and in a certain proportion of