He himself under the name of Horace Moore applied
immediately for a special also, in the hope that he would be sent down
with Monsieur Caratal, which might under certain circumstances have been
helpful to us. If, for example, our great _coup_ had failed, it would
then have become the duty of my agent to have shot them both and
destroyed their papers. Caratal was on his guard, however, and refused
to admit any other traveller. My agent then left the station, returned
by another entrance, entered the guard’s van on the side farthest from
the platform, and travelled down with McPherson the guard. “In the meantime you will be interested to know what my movements were. Everything had been prepared for days before, and only the finishing
touches were needed. The side line which we had chosen had once joined
the main line, but it had been disconnected. We had only to replace a
few rails to connect it once more. These rails had been laid down as far
as could be done without danger of attracting attention, and now it was
merely a case of completing a juncture with the line, and arranging the
points as they had been before. The sleepers had never been removed, and
the rails, fish-plates, and rivets were all ready, for we had taken them
from a siding on the abandoned portion of the line. With my small but
competent band of workers, we had everything ready long before the
special arrived. When it did arrive, it ran off upon the small side line
so easily that the jolting of the points appears to have been entirely
unnoticed by the two travellers. “Our plan had been that Smith the stoker should chloroform John Slater
the driver, so that he should vanish with the others. In this respect,
and in this respect only, our plans miscarried—I except the criminal
folly of McPherson in writing home to his wife. Our stoker did his
business so clumsily that Slater in his struggles fell off the engine,
and though fortune was with us so far that he broke his neck in the
fall, still he remained as a blot upon that which would otherwise have
been one of those complete masterpieces which are only to be
contemplated in silent admiration. The criminal expert will find in John
Slater the one flaw in all our admirable combinations. A man who has had
as many triumphs as I can afford to be frank, and I therefore lay my
finger upon John Slater, and I proclaim him to be a flaw. “But now I have got our special train upon the small line two
kilomètres, or rather more than one mile, in length, which leads, or
rather used to lead, to the abandoned Heartsease mine, once one of the
largest coal mines in England. You will ask how it is that no one saw
the train upon this unused line. I answer that along its entire length
it runs through a deep cutting, and that, unless some one had been on
the edge of that cutting, he could not have seen it. There _was_ some
one on the edge of that cutting. I was there. And now I will tell you
what I saw. “My assistant had remained at the points in order that he might
superintend the switching off of the train. He had four armed men with
him, so that if the train ran off the line—we thought it probable,
because the points were very rusty—we might still have resources to fall
back upon. Having once seen it safely on the side line, he handed over
the responsibility to me. I was waiting at a point which overlooks the
mouth of the mine, and I was also armed, as were my two companions. Come
what might, you see, I was always ready. “The moment that the train was fairly on the side line, Smith, the
stoker, slowed-down the engine, and then, having turned it on to the
fullest speed again, he and McPherson, with my English lieutenant,
sprang off before it was too late. It may be that it was this
slowing-down which first attracted the attention of the travellers, but
the train was running at full speed again before their heads appeared at
the open window. It makes me smile to think how bewildered they must
have been. Picture to yourself your own feelings if, on looking out of
your luxurious carriage, you suddenly perceived that the lines upon
which you ran were rusted and corroded, red and yellow with disuse and
decay! What a catch must have come in their breath as in a second it
flashed upon them that it was not Manchester but Death which was waiting
for them at the end of that sinister line. But the train was running
with frantic speed, rolling and rocking over the rotten line, while the
wheels made a frightful screaming sound upon the rusted surface. I was
close to them, and could see their faces. Caratal was praying, I
think—there was something like a rosary dangling out of his hand. The
other roared like a bull who smells the blood of the slaughter-house. He
saw us standing on the bank, and he beckoned to us like a madman. Then
he tore at his wrist and threw his dispatch-box out of the window in our
direction. Of course, his meaning was obvious. Here was the evidence,
and they would promise to be silent if their lives were spared. It would
have been very agreeable if we could have done so, but business is
business. Besides, the train was now as much beyond our control as
theirs. “He ceased howling when the train rattled round the curve and they saw
the black mouth of the mine yawning before them. We had removed the
boards which had covered it, and we had cleared the square entrance. The
rails had formerly run very close to the shaft for the convenience of
loading the coal, and we had only to add two or three lengths of rail in
order to lead to the very brink of the shaft. In fact, as the lengths
would not quite fit, our line projected about three feet over the edge. We saw the two heads at the window: Caratal below, Gomez above; but they
had both been struck silent by what they saw. And yet they could not
withdraw their heads. The sight seemed to have paralyzed them. “I had wondered how the train running at a great speed would take the
pit into which I had guided it, and I was much interested in watching
it. One of my colleagues thought that it would actually jump it, and
indeed it was not very far from doing so. Fortunately, however, it fell
short, and the buffers of the engine struck the other lip of the shaft
with a tremendous crash. The funnel flew off into the air. The tender,
carriages, and van were all smashed up into one jumble, which, with the
remains of the engine, choked for a minute or so the mouth of the pit. Then something gave way in the middle, and the whole mass of green iron,
smoking coals, brass fittings, wheels, woodwork, and cushions all
crumbled together and crashed down into the mine. We heard the rattle,
rattle, rattle, as the _débris_ struck against the walls, and then quite
a long time afterwards there came a deep roar as the remains of the
train struck the bottom. The boiler may have burst, for a sharp crash
came after the roar, and then a dense cloud of steam and smoke swirled
up out of the black depths, falling in a spray as thick as rain all
round us.