"Lord help us," he continued, "the drunken train"ll be up directly. Get up, man, get up; you"ll be killed if you lie there."
Not a word from the unfortunate man.
They all leant over the parapet, straining their eyes to see if Joe really lay there or had crawled away. They could just make out a dark heap lying apparently right across the rails: it did not stir; not a moment was to be lost.
"Here, Ned," cried the man who had seemed to act as a sort of leader of the party, "just get down the bank somehow, and drag him off the rails.
I"ll see if I can drop down from the bridge."
Alas! This was easier said than done. The whistle of the last stopping train--sarcastically but too appropriately known among the men as "the drunken train," from the ordinary condition of a considerable number of its occupants--was already being sounded; but conveyed no warning to the poor stunned wretch who lay helpless in the engine"s path. Frantically had Ned rushed down the bank of the cutting, while his companion, at the risk of his own life, sliding, slipping, tumbling among the rafters of the bridge, had dropped close to the prostrate body, and then sprung to his feet. It was too late; the instrument of death was upon them. A moment more, and the train had pa.s.sed over their miserable companion.
In a few minutes the horror-stricken group were gathered round the poor, bleeding, mangled ma.s.s of humanity. The sight was too terrible to describe. One thing there could be no doubt about--their unhappy comrade was entirely past their help; the work of destruction had been complete; and what was _now_ to be done? Silently all crept back again to the little stile. A hasty consultation was held.
"Mates," said the chief speaker, "it"s a bad job, but it"s plain enough _we_ can"t do him no good; it"s past that. It"s no fault of ours. Poor Joe!"
"Shall we go down and drag him off the rails on to the bank?" asked Ned.
"Where"s the use, man?" replied the other; "we shall only be getting ourselves into trouble: it"ll seem then as if some one else had been having a hand in it, and we shall be getting his blood on our clothes.
It"s all over with him--that"s certain; and now we must take care of ourselves: what"s done can"t be undone. Pity we ever meddled with that bag. But that"s all past now. Not a word about this to living soul, mates. I"m sure we all see as that"s our line; and a blessed thing it"ll be if we manage to keep clear of another sc.r.a.pe. This one"s been bad enough, I"m sure."
So all slunk quietly back to their own homes. And next day all Crossbourne was horrified to hear that Joe Wright had been found on the line cut to pieces by some train that had run over him.
An inquest, of course, was held; but as it was well-known that poor Joe was sadly addicted to drink, and was often away from his home for nights together on drunken sprees, it was thought, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that he had wandered on to the line in a state of intoxication, and had been overtaken and killed by the express or stopping train. A verdict of "accidental death" was given accordingly.
But poor Wright"s sad end made no difference in the drunkenness of Crossbourne; indeed, Ned and his two companions in that awful night"s adventure dared not leave their old haunts and ways, even had they wished to do so, lest any change in their habits should arouse suspicion against them. So Alcohol still maintained his sway over a vast body of loyal subjects in the busy town, and gathered in the spoils of desolate homes, broken hearts, and shattered const.i.tutions.
CHAPTER THREE.
DOCTOR JOHN PROSSER.
The express train which pa.s.sed through Crossbourne station between ten and eleven o"clock on the night when Joe Wright met with his sad end, arrived in London about three a.m. the following morning. It was heavily laden, for it conveyed a large number of persons from the north, who were coming up to the metropolis to spend Christmas with their friends.
From a first-cla.s.s carriage about the middle of the train there emerged a heap of coats and wraps, surmounted by a fur cap, the whole enclosing a gentleman of middle age and middle height, with black beard and moustache, and gold-rimmed spectacles.
"Cab, sir?" asked the porter who opened the door.
"If you please."
"Any luggage, sir?"
"Yes; it was put on the roof of my carriage."
"All right, sir; I"ll see to it if you"ll get into the cab."
So the gentleman, who was John Prosser, PhD, got into the cab which was waiting for him; and having seen that his luggage was all brought to the conveyance, threw himself into a corner and closed his eyes, having given his direction to the driver as he was stepping into the vehicle.
"Stop a moment, Jim," said the porter to the cabman, as the latter was just jerking his reins for a start. "Here, catch hold of this bag; it was on the top of this gent"s carriage: no one else owns to it, so it must be his"n. The gent"s forgotten it, I dessay."
So saying, he threw a light, shabby-looking carpet-bag up to the driver, who deposited it by his side, and drove off.
After sleeping for a few hours at a hotel where he was well-known, and having urgent business in the city next morning, the doctor deposited his luggage, which he had left with sundry rugs and shawls in charge of the hotel night porter, at his own door on his way to keep his business appointment, leaving word that he should be at home in the afternoon.
With the other luggage there was handed in the shabby-looking carpet-bag which had come with it.
"What"s this?" asked the boy-in-b.u.t.tons, in a tone of disgust, of the housemaid, as he touched the bag with his outstretched foot.
"I don"t know, I"m sure," was the reply. "It ain"t anything as master took with him, and I"m quite sure it don"t belong to mistress."
"I"ll tell you what it is," said the boy abruptly, and in a solemn voice, "it"s something as has to do with science. There"s something soft inside it, I can feel. P"raps there"s something alive in it--I shouldn"t wonder. Oh! P"raps there"s gun-cotton in it. I"d take care how I carried it if I was you, Mary, or p"raps it"ll go off and blow you to bits!"
"Oh goodness!" exclaimed the housemaid, "I won"t touch it. Just you take it yourself and put it into master"s study; it"ll be safest there."
So the boy, with a grin of extreme satisfaction at the success of his a.s.sault on the housemaid"s nerves, helped her to carry the rest of the luggage upstairs, and then deposited the mysterious bag in a corner of the doctor"s own special sanctum. Now this study was a room worth describing, and yet not very easy to describe.
The doctor"s house itself was one of those not very attractive-looking dwellings which are to be found by streetfuls running from square to square in the west end of London. It had stood patiently there for many a long year, as was evident from the antiquated moulding over the doorway, and from a great iron extinguisher, in which the link-bearers of old used to quench their torches, which formed part of the sombre- coloured ironwork that skirted the area. The gloomy monotony of the street was slightly relieved by a baker"s shop at one corner and a chemist"s at the other. But for these, the general aspect would have been one of unbroken dinginess.
Nor did the interior of the doctor"s house present a much livelier appearance.
The entrance-hall, which was dark and narrow, had rather a sepulchral smell about it, which was not otherwise than in keeping with some shelves of books at the farther end--the overflow apparently of the doctor"s library; the tall, dark volumes therein looking like so many tombs of the _dead_ languages.
To the left, as you entered the hall, was a dining-room ma.s.sively furnished, adorned with a few family portraits, and as many vigorous engravings. But there lacked that indescribable air of comfort which often characterises those rooms devoted to the innocent and social refreshment of the body at meal-times. The chairs, though in themselves all that dining-room chairs ought to be, did not look as if on a habitual good understanding with one another; some were against the wall, and others stood near the table, and at irregular distances, as though they never enjoyed that cozy fraternity so desirable in well- conditioned seats. Books, too, lay about in little zigzag heaps; while a bunch of keys, a pair of lady"s gloves, and a skein of coloured wool lay huddled together on the centre of the sideboard. The whole arrangement, or rather disarrangement, of the room bespoke, on the part of the presiding female management, an indifference to those minor details of order and comfort a due attention to which makes home (a genuine English home) the happiest spot in the world.
Opposite to this room, on the other side of the hall, was another of similar size, used apparently as a sort of reception-room. Huge book- shelves occupied two of the walls, an orrery stood against a third, while dusty curiosities filled up the corners. There was something peculiarly depressing about the general appearance and tone of this apartment,--nothing bright, nothing to suggest cheerful and happy thoughts,--plenty of food for the mind, but presented in such an indigestible form as was calculated to inflict on the consumer intellectual nightmare. This room was known as the library.
But we pa.s.s on to the doctor"s own special room--the study. This was beyond and behind the dining-room. Book-shelves towered on all sides, filled with volumes of all sizes, and in nearly all languages, some in exquisitely neat white vellum binding, with Tome One, Tome Two, etcetera, in shining gold on their backs--the products of an age when a conscientiousness could be traced in the perfect finish of all the details of a work external or internal; some in the form of stately folios, suggestive at once both of the solidity and depth of learning possessed by the writers and expected in the readers; while a mult.i.tude of lesser volumes were crowded together, some erect, others lying flat, or leaning against one another for support. Greek and Latin cla.s.sic authors, and in all languages poets, historians, and specially writers on science were largely represented--even French and German octavoes standing at ease in long regiments side by side, suggestive of no Franco-Prussian war, but only of an intellectual contest, arising out of amicable differences of opinion. On one side of the princ.i.p.al bookcase was an electrical machine, and on the other an air-pump; while a rusty sword and a pair of ancient gauntlets served as links to connect the warlike past with the pacific present. In the centre of the room was a large leather-covered writing-table, on which lay a perfect chaos of printed matter and ma.n.u.script; while bottles of ink, red, black, and blue, might be seen emerging from the confusion like diminutive forts set there to guard the papers from unlearned and intrusive fingers.
Order was clearly not the doctor"s "first law;" and certainly it must have required no common powers of memory to enable him, when seated in front of the confusion he himself had made, to lay his hand upon any particular book or ma.n.u.script which might claim his immediate attention.
On either side of a small fire-place at the rear of the table, and above it, hung charts, historical, geological, and meteorological; while a very dim portrait of some friend of the doctor, or perhaps of some literary celebrity, looked down from over the doorway through a haze of venerable dust on the scientific labours which it could neither share nor lighten.
In the corner of the room farthest from the door was a little closet, seldom opened, secured by a patent lock, whose contents no one was acquainted with save the doctor himself. The housemaid, whose duties in this room were confined to an occasional wary sweeping and dusting, and fire-lighting in the winter season, would keep at a respectful distance from this closet, or pa.s.s it with a creeping dread; for the boy-in- b.u.t.tons had thrown out dark suggestions that it probably contained the skulls of murderers, or, at the least, snakes and scorpions preserved in spirits, or even possibly alive, and ready to attack any daring intruder on their privacy.
Such were Dr John Prosser"s home and study.
It was just four o"clock in the afternoon of the 24th of December when the doctor returned to his house from the city.
"Is your mistress at home?" he asked of the boy.
"No, sir; she told me to tell you that she was gone to a meeting of the school board."
The doctor"s countenance fell. He was evidently disappointed; and no wonder, for he had been away from his home for the last ten days, and felt keenly the absence of his wife, and of a loving greeting on his return.
"Any letters for me, William?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, they"re on your table; and, please, sir, I"ve put the little carpet-bag into your study."
"Carpet-bag! What carpet-bag?" asked his master.
"Why, sir, the little bag as came with your luggage. We didn"t take it upstairs, because it"s nothing as you took with you when you left home, and Mary says it don"t belong to mistress; so I thought it would be better to put it into your study till you came home, as it might be something particular. It"s in the corner by the fire-place, sir."
"Well, well, never mind," was the reply; "let me know when your mistress comes in," and the doctor retired to his sanctum.