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Page 78
Having dispatched my telegram, I boarded the 6:55. I thought I
should have the compartment to myself, and so deep in reverie was
I that the train was actually clear of the platforms ere I learned
that I had a companion. He must have joined me at the moment that
the train started. Certainly, I had not seen him enter. But,
suddenly looking up, I met the eyes of this man who occupied the
corner seat facing me.
This person was olive-skinned, clean-shaven, fine featured, and
perfectly groomed. His age might have been anything from twenty-five
to forty-five, but his hair and brows were jet black. His eyes, too,
were nearer to real black than any human eyes I had ever seen
before--excepting the awful eyes of Hassan of Aleppo. Hassan of
Aleppo! It was, to that hour, a mystery how his group of trained
assassins--the Hashishin--had quitted England. Since none of them
were known to the police, it was no insoluble mystery, I admit; but
nevertheless it was singular that the careful watching of the ports
had yielded no result. Could it be that some of them had not yet
left the country? Could it be--
I looked intently into the black eyes. They were caressing, smiling
eyes, and looked boldly into mine. I picked up a magazine,
pretending to read. But I supported it with my left hand; my right
was in my coat pocket--and it rested upon my Smith and Wesson!
So much had the slipper of Mohammed done for me: I went in hourly
dread of murderous attack!
My travelling companion watched me; of that I was certain. I could
feel his gaze. But he made no move and no word passed between us.
This was the situation when the train slowed into Northampton. At
Northampton, to my indescribable relief (frankly, I was as nervous
in those days as a woman), the Oriental traveller stepped out on to
the platform.
Having reclosed the door, he turned and leaned in through the open
window.
"Evidently you are not concerned, Mr. Cavanagh," he said. "Be
warned. Do not interfere with those that are!"
The night swallowed him up.
My fears had been justified; the man was one of the Hashishin--a
spy of Hassan of Aleppo! What did it mean?
I craned from the window, searching the platform right and left.
But there was no sign of him.
When the train left Northampton I found myself alone, and I should
only weary you were I to attempt to recount the troubled conjectures
that bore me company to Birmingham.
The train reached New Street at nine, with the result that having
gulped a badly needed brandy and soda in the buffet, I grabbed my
bag, raced across--and just missed the connection! More than an
hour later I found myself standing at ten minutes to eleven upon
the H-- platform, watching the red taillight of the "local"
disappear into the night. Then I realized to the full that with
four miles of lonely England before me there hung above my head a
mysterious threat--a vague menace. The solitary official, who
but waited my departure to lock up the station, was the last
representative of civilization I could hope to encounter until the
gates of "Uplands" should be opened to me!
What was the matter with which I was warned not to interfere? Might
I not, by my mere presence in that place, unwittingly be interfering
now?
With the station-master's directions humming like a refrain in my
ears, I passed through the sleeping village and out on to the road.
The moon was exceptionally bright and unobscured, although a dense
bank of cloud crept slowly from the west, and before me the path
stretched as an unbroken thread of silvery white twining a sinuous
way up the bracken-covered slope, to where, sharply defined against
the moonlight sky, a coppice in grotesque silhouette marked the
summit.
The month had been dry and tropically hot, and my footsteps rang
crisply upon the hard ground. There is nothing more deceptive
than a straight road up a hill; and half an hour's steady tramping
but saw me approaching the trees.
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