Page:The omnibus of crime (1929).pdf/367

Victor L. Whitechurch

The affair of the goods trick on the Didcot and Newbury branch of the Great Western Railway was vf singular interest, and found a prominent piace in Thorpe Hazell's note-book. It was owing partly to chance, and partly to Hazell's sagacity, that the main incidents in the story were discovered, but he always declared that the chief interest to his mind was the unique method by which a yery daring plan was camied out.

He was staying with a frend at Newbury at the time, and had taken his camera down with him, for he was a bit of an amateur photographer as well as beak-lever, though his photos generally consisted of trains and engines. He had just come in from a morning's ramble with his camera slung over his shoulder, and was preparing to partake of two plasmon biscuits, when his friend met him in the hall,

"T say, Hazell," he began, "you're just the fellow they want here."

"What's up?" asked Hazell, taking off his camera and commencing some "exercises."

"ye just been down to the station. 1 know the station-master very well, and he tells me an awfully queer thing happencd on the line last night."

"Where?"

"On the Didcot branch. It's a single linc, you know, running through the Berkshire Duwns to Didcot."

Hazell smiled, and went on whirling his arms round his hiead.

"Kind of you to give me the information," he said, "but I happen to know the line. But what's occurred?"

"Well, it appears a goods-train left Didcot last night bound through to Winchester, and that one of the waggons never arrived here at Newbury."

"Not very much in that," replied Hazell, still at his "exercises," "wuless the waggon in question was behind the brake and the couplings snapped, in which case the next train along might have ran into it."

"Oh, no, The waggon was in the middle of the train."

"Probably left in a siding by mistake," replied Hazell.

"But the station-master says that all the stations along the line have been wired to, and that it isn't at any of them."