Africa Government Railways, stood in his box at the west end of Middeldorp station, gazing meditatively down the yard to the platforms beyond.
It was his week on night duty, which he took in rotation with two other men. Not by any stretch of the imagination could the night shift in this particular box be called sweated labour. For the best part of an hour—indeed, since he had wearied reading and re-reading yesterday’s Middeldorp Record—Ashe had paced his cabin, or stood looking ruminatively out of its windows. For the slackest period of the twenty-four hours was just then drawing to a close. It was nearly six a.m., and since the north express had passed through shortly before four, no train had arrived or left. Except to let the engine of an early goods pass from the locomotive sheds opposite the cabin to the marshalling yards at the far end of the station, Ashe had not put his hand to a lever during the whole two hours.
He was now watching the platforms for the appearance of his mate, who was due to relieve him at six a.m. Every morning, when the hands of his clock drew to five minutes before the hour, the squat figure of the man next in the cycle would emerge from behind the Permanent Way Inspector’s hut at the end of No. 1 Platform, as though operated by the timepiece on some extension of the cuckoo principle. Can in hand, the man would come down the ramp, pass along the side of the line, and, crossing the neck of a group of carriage sidings, would reach the box in time to take over at the hour.
Suddenly a bell rang sharply, a single, clear, imperious stroke. Obedient, Ashe turned to an instrument placed at the back of the box, and marked with a brass label, ‘Gunter’s Kloof,’ and pressed a plunger. Again and again the bell sounded, and Ashe, having replied in the same code, pushed in the plunger and held it steady. With a slight click, a little card bearing the word ‘IN’ in black letters on a white ground shot from behind a tiny window in the instrument, and another card bearing in white letters on a red ground the word ‘OUT’ took its place. Ashe released the plunger, and, glancing at the clock, turned to a book lying open on the desk, and laboriously entered in spidery figures the time—5.57 a.m. At the same moment the door opened, and the relief man appeared.
‘That No. 17?’ queried the newcomer, as he placed his can beside the little stove and hung up his coat.
‘Ay, she’s running twelve minutes late,’ Ashe answered. ‘Warned at fifty-seven.’
‘No specials?’
‘Not so far.’
Some further conversation passed between the two men, then Ashe, having signed off, took his can and stepped out of the box.
It was a brilliant morning in late November. The sun, still low in the sky, was pleasantly warm after the chill which always obtains at night in South African uplands. Not a cloud was visible, and the air was extraordinarily clear and thin. Objects stood out, sharply defined, and throwing deep black shadows. Except for the faint rumble of an engine creeping out of the round-house, everything was very still.
Ashe descended the cabin steps and took his way along the railway in the opposite direction to that in which his mate had approached. He lived in a western suburb, and the railway was his most direct way home. The tracks, which were eight wide opposite the cabin, gradually converged towards the west, ’til at the Ballat Road overbridge, a quarter of a mile away, they had shrunk to the single main line which, after wandering interminably across the country, ended at Cape Town, nearly one thousand miles distant.
Beyond the Ballat Road bridge, the line curved sharply to the left, and in a cutting some twenty feet deep ran for a couple of hundred yards to a short tunnel, which carried one of the main streets of the town, Dartie Avenue, at a skew angle across the railway. To be in the centre of a city, the stretch of line between these bridges was extraordinarily secluded. Busy though both the streets in question were, all view from them was cut off by tall boardings carried up from the parapet of each bridge, and placed there originally to prevent the steam of passing trains from startling horses. At the top of the cutting at each side of the line the boundary was marked by a five-foot stone wall. Behind that, on the left side—the inside of the curve—were the houses of the town. The right-hand wall divided the railway from the Groote Park, a botanical gardens of exceptional size and luxuriance.
Ashe trudged slowly along the four foot, his eyes on the ground and his thoughts dwelling with satisfaction on the hot rashers and the clean, white sheets he was so soon to enjoy. He had almost reached the Dartie Avenue Tunnel when, looking up suddenly at the dark opening in the grey stonework, he saw something which made him halt abruptly.
Lying in the right-hand offset, close against the masonry of the side, and about twenty yards inside the mouth, was a body, apparently a man’s. Something in the attitude, even with the vague outline which was all that the gloom of the archway revealed, suggested disaster, and Ashe, after his first instinctive pause, hurried forward, half expecting what he would find.
His worst fears were confirmed as he reached the place and stood looking down with horror-stricken eyes at the battered and disfigured remains of what had once been a tall, strongly-built man. It was evident at a glance that he had been struck by a passing train, and there could be no doubt that death had been instantaneous. The injuries were terrible. The body seemed to have been dragged along the ground by the engine cow-catcher, rather than to have been struck and thrown cleanly aside. It looked even as if the head had got under the cow-catcher, for the back of the skull was crushed in like an eggshell, while the features were torn and unrecognisable as if from contact with the rough ballast. The back was similarly crushed and the chest scraped open. Three of the limbs were broken, and, what seemed to Ashe the most appalling spectacle of all, the fourth, the right arm, was entirely parted from the trunk and lay by itself between the rails some yards farther back along the line.
For some moments Ashe stood transfixed, overcome by the revolting sight. Then, pulling himself together, he turned and hurried back along the railway to report his discovery. ‘No. 17,’ the goods train he had accepted before going off duty, clattered past him near the Ballat Road bridge, and when he reached the station he found that its driver had seen the body and already given the alarm. The stationmaster, hastily summoned, had just arrived, and Ashe was able to let him have some additional details of the tragedy.
‘Police job,’ the stationmaster curtly decided. ‘You say the body is thrown clear of the trains?’
‘Up against the tunnel wall,’ Ashe agreed.
‘I’ll go and ’phone police headquarters now,’ went on the stationmaster. ‘You tell that man that’s just come off No. 17 that his engine will be wanted to run out to the place, and see Deane and get a passenger van shunted out. Then ’phone the west cabin what we’re going to do.’
The stationmaster hurried off, and Ashe turned to carry out his orders. Ten minutes later the special pulled out, having on board the stationmaster, Ashe, Sergeant Clarke of the City Police, as well as Dr Bakker, a police surgeon, and two constables. It stopped a few yards short of the mouth of the tunnel, and the men, clambering down from the van, went forward on foot. Even the hardened nerves of the police were not proof against the horrible sight which met their eyes on reaching the body, and all six men stood for some moments, shocked into silence. Then, with a muttered oath, Sergeant Clarke took charge.
‘We’ll not touch anything for a minute until we have a look round,’ he said, and, suiting the action to the word, he began to take stock of his surroundings.
The dead man was lying parallel to the rails in the offset, or flat track at the side of the line. He was dressed in a suit of light brown tweed, with brown tie and soft collar. On his feet were tan shoes, and his soft brown felt hat, cut nearly in two, lay between the rails some yards nearer to the station. The gleam of a gold watch chain showed beneath his partly open coat.
The
