‘That No. 17?’ queried the newcomer, as he placed his can beside the little stove and hung up his coat.
‘Ay, she’s running twelve minutes late,’ Ashe answered. ‘Warned at fifty-seven.’
‘No specials?’
‘Not so far.’
Some further conversation passed between the two men, then Ashe, having signed off, took his can and stepped out of the box.
It was a brilliant morning in late November. The sun, still low in the sky, was pleasantly warm after the chill which always obtains at night in South African uplands. Not a cloud was visible, and the air was extraordinarily clear and thin. Objects stood out, sharply defined, and throwing deep black shadows. Except for the faint rumble of an engine creeping out of the round-house, everything was very still.
Ashe descended the cabin steps and took his way along the railway in the opposite direction to that in which his mate had approached. He lived in a western suburb, and the railway was his most direct way home. The tracks, which were eight wide opposite the cabin, gradually converged towards the west, ’til at the Ballat Road overbridge, a quarter of a mile away, they had shrunk to the single main line which, after wandering interminably across the country, ended at Cape Town, nearly one thousand miles distant.
Beyond the Ballat Road bridge, the line curved sharply to the left, and in a cutting some twenty feet deep ran for a couple of hundred yards to a short tunnel, which carried one of the main streets of the town, Dartie Avenue, at a skew angle across the railway. To be in the centre of a city, the stretch of line between these bridges was extraordinarily secluded. Busy though both the streets in question were, all view from them was cut off by tall boardings carried up from the parapet of each bridge, and placed there originally to prevent the steam of passing trains from startling horses. At the top of the cutting at each side of the line the boundary was marked by a five-foot stone wall. Behind that, on the left side—the inside of the curve—were the houses of the town. The right-hand wall divided the railway from the Groote Park, a botanical gardens of exceptional size and luxuriance.
Ashe trudged slowly along the four foot, his eyes on the ground and his thoughts dwelling with satisfaction on the hot rashers and the clean, white sheets he was so soon to enjoy. He had almost reached the Dartie Avenue Tunnel when, looking up suddenly at the dark opening in the grey stonework, he saw something which made him halt abruptly.
Lying in the right-hand offset, close against the masonry of the side, and about twenty yards inside the mouth, was a body, apparently a man’s. Something in the attitude, even with the vague outline which was all that the gloom of the archway revealed, suggested disaster, and Ashe, after his first instinctive pause, hurried forward, half expecting what he would find.
His worst fears were confirmed as he reached the place and stood looking down with horror-stricken eyes at the battered and disfigured remains of what had once been a tall, strongly-built man. It was evident at a glance that he had been struck by a passing train, and there could be no doubt that death had been instantaneous. The injuries were terrible. The body seemed to have been dragged along the ground by the engine cow-catcher, rather than to have been struck and thrown cleanly aside. It looked even as if the head had got under the cow-catcher, for the back of the skull was crushed in like an eggshell, while the features were torn and unrecognisable as if from contact with the rough ballast. The back was similarly crushed and the chest scraped open. Three of the limbs were broken, and, what seemed to Ashe the most appalling spectacle of all, the fourth, the right arm, was entirely parted from the trunk and lay by itself between the rails some yards farther back along the line.
For some moments Ashe stood transfixed, overcome by the revolting sight. Then, pulling himself together, he turned and hurried back along the railway to report his discovery. ‘No. 17,’ the goods train he had accepted before going off duty, clattered past him near the Ballat Road bridge, and when he reached the station he found that its driver had seen the body and already given the alarm. The stationmaster, hastily summoned, had just arrived, and Ashe was able to let him have some additional details of the tragedy.
‘Police job,’ the stationmaster curtly decided. ‘You say the body is thrown clear of the trains?’
‘Up against the tunnel wall,’ Ashe agreed.
‘I’ll go and ’phone police headquarters now,’ went on the stationmaster. ‘You tell that man that’s just come off No. 17 that his engine will be wanted to run out to the place, and see Deane and get a passenger van shunted out. Then ’phone the west cabin what we’re going to do.’
The stationmaster hurried off, and Ashe turned to carry out his orders. Ten minutes later the special pulled out, having on board the stationmaster, Ashe, Sergeant Clarke of the City Police, as well as Dr Bakker, a police surgeon, and two constables. It stopped a few yards short of the mouth of the tunnel, and the men, clambering down from the van, went forward on foot. Even the hardened nerves of the police were not proof against the horrible sight which met their eyes on reaching the body, and all six men stood for some moments, shocked into silence. Then, with a muttered oath, Sergeant Clarke took charge.
‘We’ll not touch anything for a minute until we have a look round,’ he said, and, suiting the action to the word, he began to take stock of his surroundings.
The dead man was lying parallel to the rails in the offset, or flat track at the side of the line. He was dressed in a suit of light brown tweed, with brown tie and soft collar. On his feet were tan shoes, and his soft brown felt hat, cut nearly in two, lay between the rails some yards nearer to the station. The gleam of a gold watch chain showed beneath his partly open coat.
The manner of the happening was writ only too clearly on the ground. The first mark, some thirty yards farther into the tunnel, was a small stain of blood on the rail, and from there to where the body lay, the traces of the disaster were sadly apparent. Save as to the man’s identity, there was no mystery here. Each one of the little group standing round could reconstruct for himself how the tragedy had occurred.
Sergeant Clarke, having observed these details, turned slowly to his companions.
‘Who found the body?’ he asked, producing a well-thumbed notebook.
Both Ashe and the driver claiming the distinction, Clarke took statements from each.
‘It’s clear from the marks,’ he went on, ‘that the man was killed by an incoming train?’ The stationmaster at whom he glanced, nodded decisively. ‘Now, what trains pass through during the night?’
‘Down trains?’ the stationmaster answered. ‘There are four. First there’s a local passenger from Harrisonville; gets here at 8.50 in the evening. The next is the mail, the through express for the north. It passes here at 11.10 p.m. Then there’s a goods gets in about midnight, and another goods about 2.30 a.m. These are not very regular, but we can get you the time they arrived last night.’
The sergeant nodded as he laboriously noted these details.
‘What about the engines of those trains?’ he asked. ‘No marks found on any of them?’
‘None reported so far. All the engines come off here—this is a locomotive depot, you understand—and they’re all examined by the shed staff before stabling. But we can have them looked over again if you think necessary.’
‘It might be as well.’ The sergeant wrote for some seconds, then resumed with a slightly consequential air: ‘Now tell me, who would be the last person to walk along the line, I mean the last person before this’—he looked at his notes—‘this Signalman Ashe?’
‘I could hardly answer that question offhand,’ the stationmaster said slowly. ‘The last I know of would be the permanent way men leaving work about six last night. But some of