Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/378

In another moment there was a sudden shout a terrific crash—a wild chaos of sight and sound—and our traveller know no more.

When next he found his senses, he was lying among cushions and rugs in the waiting-room at Tunbridge Wells Station. He awoke with a faint shiver, and tried to raise himself, but found to his astonishment that he could not so much as lift a finger. As a matter of fact, he was among those whom the busy surgeons had given up as a desperate case; and, after doing all in their power to ease him, abandoned in favour of more hopeful subjects; but this he did not know.

Several of the passengers whose injuries were only very slight were discussing the accident in an animated manner, and, as usual in such cases, many wild and fanciful conjectures were passed about as truth. At last one said:—

"Does anyone know the rights of the matter?"

"Yes, I do," volunteered a young man with an arm in a sling: and Margraf lay silently listening, unable to move or speak.

"Well, what is it?"

"Just after we passed Grove Park, the fireman was on the front of the engine oiling, when he felt the locomotive inereasing in speed till it became so appalling that he grew terrified and could not get back. He is a young fellow, and this is his trial trip. A length he managed to crawl back to the cab, where he found the driver lying, as he supposed, dead. This so increased his terror that he was only able to open the whistle and pull the cord communicating with the rear guard, and then fell in a swoon across the tender.

"The rear guard, a plucky young fellow of about six-and-twenty, twigging the situation, came, as we all know, along the footboard to the engine"—Margraf listened with all his remaining strength—"in order to stop the train before it ran into the Ramsgate express, but apparently was too late."

"But what was up with the driver, and where was the front guard in the meanwhile?"

"Well, it appears from what the front guard says—marvellous how he escaped with hardly a scratch—both these men had been drugged, and as they were both of them to have run the mail train to the Continent to-night, things look very fishy."

Margraf nearly fainted in his efforts to listen more intensely.

"They were changed on to this tram at the last moment, and hence this accident. The rear guard, poor fellow, was shockingly mangled. Stone dead, of course; and leaves, I understand, a wife and child. There will no doubt be a collection made for him. He was a plucky fellow."

"Does anyone know his name?" asked one.

"Yes; his name was Charlie Osborne."

There was a heartrending groan from the cushions and rugs.

"Here," cried a young medical student among the party to a passing surgeon, "you'd better come and have a look at this poor chap. He isn't as dead as you thought he was."

The surgeon came and looked at Margraf.

"Isn't he?" he said, in his cool, professional way. "He is a good deal farther gone than I thought. He couldn't be gone much farther."

"The surgeon came and looked at Margraf."