CHAPTER II

The Redoubtable Harry Price

SIBELLA, IN HER usual marmish fashion, had packed a carpet-bag for me containing some fresh linens and toilet equipment. For whatever reason, she likes to do these things, and I have realised—perhaps a little late in our association—that it was easier just to accept these foibles. Not requiring the extra burden, however, it was my plan to deposit the bag in the Left Luggage office at Victoria railway station, should time permit it.

Sitting at the bar in the reading-room, I nursed my beaker of brandy and watched as Horrocks went through the Bradshaw book and jotted down my journey details onto a separate leaf of paper. With a final decisive stroke of his pencil, he folded the piece of paper and handed it to me with a wavering hand and a solemn smile:

“Your itinerary, sir.”

“How long have I got?” I asked sullenly, casting an unsteady eye at the wall clock.

“If you have a look, sir, you’ll see that I’ve given you two hours. But the train leaves at three minutes past the hour, every hour.”

I picked the paper up and pretended to examine its contents.

“Let’s get this over and done with,” I said finally. “Horrocks, you’d better get me my hat and coat.”

I folded the piece of paper in half again and slotted it into the pocket of my waistcoat. When I had done this, I looked up and was surprised to see that Horrocks was still hovering behind the bar.

“Horrocks?”

“Sorry, sir. It’s just…your hat and coat?”

“What about them?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know those particular items, sir.”

“Oh,” I replied thoughtfully, “well, just get me something from the cloak-room.”

With a pensive look and vague nod, Horrocks withdrew. Knocking back the last of the brandy, I got up from the stool I was perched on and crossed the room. Halfway to the door, I came to halt and turned back to retrieve the carpet-bag.

Walking into the club’s reception room a minute or two later, I noticed that Sibella was there, instructing a new member on some matter of procedure. Observing me, she mimed that I should hold on and went about detaching herself from the conversation. She broke away just as Horrocks appeared from the cloak-room brandishing a fur coat and a battered bowler hat.

“What’s that, Horrocks?” Sibella inquired, addressing the jumble cradled in his arms.

“Mr. Hart suggested that I collect a hat and coat, ma’am,” he replied, with an air of ill-concealed disdain. “He felt that he required them. For his trip.”

“Where did you get them?”

“Lost property, ma’am,” Horrocks said. “They were uncollected.”

“That is hardly surprising,” Sibella replied sharply. She turned and looked eagerly at me, as I accepted the items from Horrocks. “You’re not seriously considering wearing these things, are you?”

“I have no one to impress in Kent.”

If the hat and coat had once had quality, it had gone now. The coat—though a decent fit—was utterly without shape and, as I put it on, I was struck by the overpowering stench of mothballs. The hat, however, was clearly made for some Goliath, and it slid down over the tops of my ears. At Sibella’s insistence, I delayed my departure some minutes and allowed Horrocks to brush the hat and stuff its lining with newspaper. When the job was done, I bade them both farewell and turned to leave—but, as I did, Sibella reached out and gripped my hand, conveying in an intimate tone her desire that I should “stay safe”. Unsettled by the uncharacteristic display of affection, I nodded and withdrew…

The Hyperborea Club is one of those great white buildings in St James’s that lie just beyond the Pall Mall Arch. Before the war, the broad thoroughfare outside had been lined at both ends by shiny black taxi cabs. But petroleum shortages had long since returned us to the Victorian age, and now it is populated, instead, by ancient Broughams and Hansom cabs, whose Jarvies circle the Broadway, hopefully awaiting fares from club patrons.

Exiting the club, I looked across at the busy concourse of traps and horses and swung my arm up.

“Where to, Guv?”

I swerved around and saw an elderly man leaning against one of the pillars of the next building. As I turned to address him, he straightened and pulled his hand-rolled cigarette from his mouth.

“Victoria train station?”

The man nodded.

“Jus’ you, is it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

With another nod, the man hastily discarded his cigarette, and walking towards me, gestured to me to give up the carpet-bag. I did so, quite happily.

Together we crossed the parade, where the door of a two-wheeler was flung open and I was quickly ushered inside. I sat in the darkened carriage for some moments listening to the distant rumbling of carts on the road, before I heard my driver lead his horse and the cab jolted forward. Bouncing about on the leather seats, I stared through the window and watched as we travelled down the Mall, passed by the Palace and coursed into a long, dark street festooned with commercial properties. The roughness of the journey quite upset my stomach, but thankfully it did not last long.

Soon the door was opened once again and I stepped outside. Having paid the driver some coins, I retrieved the carpet-bag and was directed up some stone steps. Arriving at the top of them, I found myself transported beneath the iron roof of Victoria Station and amid a dense and bustling throng of people, who jostled about the crowded terminus.

I consulted my papers and walked across the station floor to a man in a guard’s uniform.

“I need the London, Chatham and Dover Line,” I told the man—a small pock-marked bird in an ill-fitting peaked cap. Wiping his nose across the arm of his jacket, he stared up at me.

“Yeah?” he said. “Less see yer tickit.”

“What ticket?”

At this, the Guard frowned and changed tack.

“Where yer goin’ to?”

“Broadstairs,” I told him. “It’s in Kent.”

“Right, you need a tickit, dan’t you?”

Grabbing hold of my coat sleeve, the Guard led me across the station floor to the ticket office, depositing me at the end of a large, slow-moving queue.

I stood restlessly there for some minutes doing nothing more than staring at a colour poster presented inside a glass case between the two ticket counters. It depicted a man with lacquered hair and a second-rate suit, hunched uneasily in an armchair. By his feet, a boy was playing with toy soldiers; whilst, perched on his knee, an apple-cheeked girl (of quite unnecessarily sentimental design) fingered the pages of a picture book and asked: “Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?” I paused to consider if there were similarly crass posters adorning the railway stations of Dresden or Munich (perhaps depicting some curly-moustached Teutonic type with a golden-haired child resting on the lap of his leather shorts) or if this sort of thing was reserved solely for the modern John Bull.

Slowly the queue dwindled away and I stood addressing a sharp-faced pensioner seated in a ticket booth.

“A ticket to Broadstairs,” I told him.

He stared lifelessly back at me, saying nothing.

“Hello?” I said. “Can you hear me?”

“When you comin’ back?”

“At the end of the weekend,” I replied. “Sunday, I suppose.”

“Yeah? What kind d’you want?”

I frowned perplexedly, but the man steeled and gave nothing away.

“What do you mean?”

“What kind of ticket do you want?” he said tersely.

“I really don’t care what the ticket looks like,” I replied. “I just want a ticket. Here.”

Pulling out a ten pound note from my pocket, I pushed it across the counter towards him.

As the man labouriously processed my ticket and passed back my change, I asked him: “Where do I go now?”

“You need the Lon’on, Chatham and Dover line.”

“I know that,” I snapped. “Where do I find it?”

“Eastern side,” he replied, pointing across the station floor. “Then follow the signs.”

I left him and struggled onwards, weaving through a dense populace of soldiers returning to duty, their disconsolate families and a selection of low-looking females whom I took to be prostitutes.

It struck me that there was something otherworldly about these great municipal railway stations—it was the noise and smoke and waves of dispossessed people. I could readily imagine myself lost in some classical depiction of Hell.

Having procured a number of newspapers from the bookstall, I walked down the platform and boarded the train in a cloud of filthy air. Due to the delay with the tickets, I was still lugging about the carpet-bag that Sibella had packed for me. I planted the bag and the bowler hat into the wooden rack above my head and settled into a seat within the empty compartment.

Presently, the compartment began to fill up. A small, sallow-looking man climbed into it, furiously rubbing his hands together. The left leg of his trousers had lost its stitching and hung down behind his heel. As he planted himself into the chair next to me, I was hit by the curiously potent scent of old bread crusts. He was closely followed by a slipshod woman of robust character who dropped breathlessly into the seat on my other side. Unclasping the handbag resting on her knees, she delved inside and surreptitiously extracted a large pink saveloy, which she devoured hungrily.

Just as the whistle blew and the train departed the station, a beery looking bloke (from the candle wax staining his frayed shirt cuffs, evidently some manner of tallow chandler) clambered into the carriage from the platform’s edge and settled into the vacant seat opposite me—whereupon, he instantly took up a knife that had been concealed within his left boot. Not unnaturally, I started at this, and, observing my surprise, the man looked across at me with some relish. Then, apparently by way of explanation, he took a pippin from the pocket of his dishevelled greatcoat and sliced into it. “Don’t worry,” the man breathed in a low, rasping voice as he pulled away a chunk of the apple with his thumb. “You ain’t my man. You needn’t worry.”

“I see our boys ’ave gotton Jerusalem back,” said an old man from behind a quivering newspaper, further down the line. “It’s about time we gave ’em what-for—filfy Arabs.”

“I know,” replied a marmalade-haired woman sitting two seats to my right. “It ain’t right, is it, the Germans ’aving that? After all, it were buildeth ’ere, weren’t it?”

I laughed at this, but a succession of angry faces suddenly angled towards me made me realise quickly that the remark was not intended as a joke. The old man’s newspaper lowered and he regarded me fiercely.

“It’s easy to larf if you’re over ’ere, mate,” he said, whistling through his off-coloured overbite. “Different matter when you’re out there, I daresay.”

I was taken aback. Having never been addressed as ‘mate’ before in my life, I resolved, there and then, to purchase a better hat at the first opportunity.

“Tickets, please,” called an Inspector, sliding back the glass door and entering our carriage. There was a flurry of activity from the people seated to my right, as they mechanically patted down their clothing, apparently searching for tickets they had all recently bought, but subsequently misplaced en route to the train. It struck me, from their perfunctory manner that what I was observing was sheer pantomime—and I waited happily for what would surely be some interesting theatre to unfold around me. However, as I handed over my own ticket for examination, the Inspector paused and looked at me with an air of uncertainty.

“You slumming it, sir?”

“Sorry?”

“This is a First Class ticket.”

“I see…” I responded, not quite comprehending. “And that means?”

“Well, this is a Third Class compartment.”

There was a brief impasse, as I thought about the implications. In desperation, I looked imploringly about the carriage, surprised to see that the other patrons seated there were now staring back at me with marked looks of hostility.

“Sorry?” I offered in my confusion. “Is there somewhere else I should be?”

“Come with me if you will, sir,” replied the Inspector.

Taking my bundle with me, I followed the Inspector down the winding corridor of the train, until he swung open the door of my new berth.

“This is you, sir,” he said, opening the door on the darkened compartment. “Looks as though the lamp’s blown out. I’ll fetch the boy.”

So saying, the man turned on his heel and strode purposefully away. I entered the cabin and stood for some moments inside its gloomy wood-panelled walls, watching the lights of a hundred suburban dwellings blur past the rain-spattered windows. It was a queer sensation.

When the lamp had been lighted, it was to my surprise that I perceived that there was almost no practical distinction between the Third and First Class carriage, save for a more pleasing atmosphere in the latter brought about by the scent of polish on the leather-cloth seating. I positioned myself by the window and glanced out. The train lurched onward, leaving behind the swirling yellow fog of the London particular, and moving steadily into the Kent countryside. Soon the gaunt houses of the Capital gave way to a patchwork of fields and apple orchards.

With the screech of its iron wheels on the railroad, the train pulled into Chatham Station, where it seemed to empty out. Clearly for most of the people travelling from London, this was journey’s end.

Having never seen a Kent town at close-quarters before, I studied the platform with great interest, wondering how closely it would resemble Broadstairs.

From a squat station building, an ugly parapet jutted out, made perfectly dark by the yellow lanterns on the station floor. From this, a border of white wooden slats, like a downward-facing picket fence resulted; the structure being held in place by a series of rectangular metal pillars of peculiarly ornate design. Under its canopy, a group of wretched people huddled together, staring lifelessly back at my carriage—their widely glaring eyes, so lustreless and glassy, unnerved me to the point that my hand reached, quite automatically, to the pocket of my suit and extracted my hipflask.

At Faversham Station, a well-dressed young man of oddly solemn appearance opened the door next to me, filling the carriage with the night’s chill air. Pausing, with his boot planted on the foot-rail, he spoke in a tone that was obviously naturally low, but which he had modified in order to raise it above the prevailing wind.

“Is this First?” he asked.

I nodded:

“So I understand.”

The man considered my reply and, without responding, climbed into the carriage, closing the train door behind him.

Choosing a seat midway through the compartment and on the opposite side from my own, the man put down a scratched leather Gladstone, unbuckled it and produced from it a note-book, pencil and a small novella. Stowing the bag on the wooden lath above his head, he then sat. For a moment, the man paused, languorously taking in his new surroundings, but suddenly—and with a great sense of purpose—he snatched up the note-book and pencil.

Picking up my newspaper, I fanned through its pages and, under the guise of reading, continued to observe my new companion. Doing so, I was struck that there was something quite peculiar about his appearance, but, for the life of me, could not place what it might be.

As the train departed the station, the man seemed to settle. Putting the pencil’s nib to a clean sheet in his note-book, he looked up and stared dreamily at the carriage window, as though searching for inspiration in its black gloss. As he did, it suddenly occurred to me what was wrong with his appearance. The tallow flames that lighted the compartment had given everything a dim yellowish hue, but still, when I looked at the man’s face, as compared with the relative whiteness of his collar, it was suddenly very clear to me that he was heavily jaundiced.

“You work in a munitions factory!” I exclaimed suddenly.

The man looked up from his note-book in a startled, guilty sort of way, which made me instantly cognisant of the fact that my remark had not been polite.

“Yes,” he responded in a gruff, lifeless tone.

Despite the discolouration of his skin, the man’s eyes were clear and bright. For a time, he looked me over thoughtfully, perhaps pondering the disparity between my shabby duds and First Class seat. But he said nothing. Turning away again, he threw open his coat and rifled his inside pocket, taking from it a briar pipe and a tin of tobacco.

“Sorry,” I said, worried that I had unduly offended him. “I just meant—you know—your face and everything…”

“I know what you meant,” the man responded briskly. Opening his tin, he began to stuff his pipe with tobacco. “The girls I work with call themselves ‘canaries’,” he said. “They say the yellow’s a badge of honour.” With the pipe clenched between his teeth, he cupped one hand around the bowl and struck a match. “Know what I call it?” he asked sullenly, a dense cloud of smoke crawling out between his lips, “I call it a three year bloody itch.”

“You’re a writer?” I said suddenly, wishing to change the subject.

He was clearly not expecting this. Pulling his pipe from his mouth, I noticed that it wavered momentarily in his grasp.

“You know me?” he asked.

“No.”

“My work, then?”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Price,” he said. “Harry Price.”

“Of course,” I said in a protracted way, which I hoped would give the impression of familiarity. “You write…books?”

“Plays,” he said eagerly. “Before the war I was a journalist too. But I’m now concentrating on my theatrical work—when I’m not at the factory, that is. Perhaps you have seen one of my productions?”

“I don’t spend a lot of time at the theatre, but it is not impossible. What was the story?”

“It was a true account of my own experiences with a poltergeist in a haunted manor house. In Shropshire.”

“Really?” I responded with a vapid smile. “Another one.”

“What do you mean?” Harry Price replied. “If you have seen such a play, it was undoubtedly mine. Shropshire is my county.”

“I’m sorry. You misunderstand me,” I explained, “I have not seen the play—and do not care a jot about Shropshire.” Price seemed somewhat irked by this remark. “But it seems that everyone I meet these days is obsessed with ghosts.”

Price blinked at me. “Perhaps,” he said with emphasis, “it’s because we are only now waking up to the fact that spirits are around us at all times.”

“Yes. Or, perhaps, it’s a way of coping with the senseless carnage that has invaded all our lives.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the war!”

“I don’t see how the war has any bearing on what we were talking about?”

“How could it not?” I queried. “In the Bible we read about the ‘massacre of innocents’—it had nothing on this. Every day, people are losing their husbands, fathers and sons with no more of an explanation than is contained within an impersonal, two paragraph letter from the War Office. I think it’s the most natural thing in the world to seek out a happier parting of the ways. I did so, myself, when my late wife was taken from me.”

“You saw a medium?”

“Several.”

“Did she make contact?”

“My wife? Yes, once…” I replied, “with the aid of a Mrs. Trubshawe, when I visited her in her lodgings in Bow.”

“And what message did she have for you?”

“She advised me to pay Mrs. Trubshawe sixpence. And when I asked why her voice sounded so different, I was informed that in the afterlife everyone has a cockney accent.”

Harry Price smirked and sat back in his chair.

“When I roused Mrs. Trubshawe from her ‘trance’, a squeezebox fell from between her knees.”

“Well,” Price said lightly, “I don’t suppose that you can discount spiritualism on the basis of one disreputable woman. You have to be open minded about these things.”

“As I said, I saw several mediums, the best of whom simply provided me with more sophisticated lies and trickery.”

“But you must admit that there are things that can’t be explained?” said Price.

“There certainly are,” I agreed, “but the work of spiritualist mediums is not one of them. I am yet to meet a clairvoyant who has impressed me that they are anything more profound than a confidence trickster or thief.”

“Really?” Price murmured, striking the bowl of his pipe off the arm of his chair like a gavel. “Then I wish you were coming to Broadstairs to-night.”

“Oh?” I said carefully. “Why’s that?”

“There is a man there that might be able to change your mind. He is the reason for my journey to-day, as a matter of fact. Where are you heading to, may I ask?”

“Ramsgate,” I said quickly. “But I suppose I could come to Broadstairs. Who is this man?”

“Name of Beasant,” Price replied. “I was just reading about him in one of my periodicals. And, believe me, if it is true what they say, the things he does are utterly without explanation. By you or anyone else.”

“I very much doubt that.”

Harry Price looked hard at me. “I shall show you something that you will not be able to explain.”

“Really?” I replied brightly, “Please do!”

Pushing his hands into the pockets of his sack-coat, apparently searching for something, Price produced a white handkerchief with his left hand. With a sudden look of concentration, he drew his right hand out from his pocket and splayed his fingers. Very carefully, he swept the handkerchief through them. Turning the cloth over, he repeated the process.

“An ordinary white handkerchief,” he said.

I shrugged. “I have seen one before.”

With a dramatic sweep of his fingers, Price balled his right hand and quickly pushed the handkerchief into the crevice at the top of his fist, until nothing more than a single white corner protruded from it. Then, moving his hand down, he began to pull the handkerchief from the other side of his fist, so that the cloth travelled down between his clenched fingers. As he did this, I saw that—within the closed confines of his hand—the cloth seemed to have transformed in colour from white to deep red.

I smiled, but Price rebuked me with a waggle of his left index finger. Snatching up the remaining white corner of white handkerchief, he drove it into his fist with the tip of the index finger of his left hand. When the handkerchief was fully lost to his hand, Price leaned forward.

“Pull from the bottom,” he instructed.

Sitting forward on my seat, I reached across and tugged on the cloth protruding from his closed hand, which fell into my fingers as a fully-formed red handkerchief. Then, before my eyes, Price pulled back his left hand and one-by-one splayed the fingers of his right hand until it was open before me—and entirely empty.

“Remarkable,” I said.

“You see?” Price responded. “Things are not always so easy to explain.”

“That was not what I meant.”

“Oh?”

“I just find it remarkable that, considering our conversation you would attempt to advance your case with so obvious a parlour trick.”

“I was making a point.”

“Were you?” I replied. “And what was that?”

“That some things are not always so simple to explain even for the rational mind.”

“I’m afraid you didn’t succeed.”

Harry Price picked up the red handkerchief and toyed with it for a short time. Then he held it before me.

“Here. Examine it. You’ll find there is nothing unusual about it.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” I replied dismissively.

Price paused for a moment.

“Well then how did I change its colour?”

I leaned forward in my chair: “I don’t understand. You want me to explain the trick you just performed?”

“If you can.”

“As you wish,” I replied. “Obviously, I cannot be exactly sure, so please allow for a small margin of error…

“Firstly…” I began, “it’s fairly obvious that your performance wasn’t as impromptu as you would have me believe. You showed me a white handkerchief. You then turned it, satisfying me that it was white on both sides. You told me that it was ‘ordinary’, so, naturally, my suspicions would be against it. But prior to this, when you had made such a show of taking the handkerchief from your pocket, I imagine you also surreptitiously palmed a slim—probably flesh-coloured—tube. It was this that contained the corresponding red handkerchief.”

Price sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed upon me.

“With the tube hidden from my view underneath the white handkerchief, you very swiftly moved it to your right hand, which you then closed tightly around it. I was then presented with your closed fist. Feeding the white handkerchief into it, you were, in fact, forcing it into the tube, which, in turn, pushed the red handkerchief out. At your instruction, I then pulled on this.”

Blinking slowly, a thin smile played upon Harry Price’s lips: “You saw my open palm,” he said with a shrug. “There was nothing there.”

I reached into my pocket and took out my cigarette case.

“That’s how I knew there was a tube involved,” I replied, putting a cigarette to my mouth and striking a match. “When you pushed your finger into your fist, you were also driving it into the tube—the aperture at the top of which being so tight that your finger became wedged inside it. With my attention diverted examining the red handkerchief, you were able to draw your left index finger back with one swift movement—with the tube attached to the top of it. Upon doing so, you instantly closed your left hand with the tube concealed inside it. Then, of course, in the typically flamboyant fashion of an amateur magician, you opened your fist and…” I waved a hand languidly, sending smoke twisting through the air, “I was duly amazed.”

Price looked at me for a moment in wonder; then for another in doubt.

“You know the trick then?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then how could you be so sure how it was done?”

I sucked hard on the cigarette; then shrugged. “In my experience, logic tends to favour the mundane.”

“Well…” Price said, after a moment’s consideration, “it has no bearing on my beliefs in spiritualism.”

“No—you’re wrong,” I responded briskly, “I think it does a lot of damage. Perhaps if theatrical illusion and clairvoyance weren’t so hopelessly entangled in the public consciousness things might be different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some legitimacy could be given to spiritualism if mediums opened themselves up to test conditions. They never do, and so, they are treated with disdain by anyone of an even vaguely scientific frame of mind.”

“That is not so!” Price replied defensively. “You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about! I know many spiritualist mediums myself and the reason they are unable to avail themselves to testing is because the spirits themselves are wary of such things.”

“How frightfully convenient!” I exclaimed with a laugh. “And you believed that, did you?”

“If you keep an open mind—–”

“There you go again, with your ‘open mind,’” I interjected. “You say I should keep an ‘open mind’ about these things, yet that is precisely what the followers of spiritualism don’t have. Clairvoyants only survive because their customers want to believe in a certain thing—it is the very reason they have pitched up with them in the first place. The medium then provides the ‘proof’ they are looking for and their business is concluded. In terms such as these, I don’t have a problem with spiritualism. It is only when it becomes fashionable and I am beset by people telling me that I am in error because I cannot believe something unreasonable that it becomes offensive.”

“I have found that there is little point in trying to argue with people that are in such a frame of mind as yours,” responded Price. “Your cynicism is understandable, I suppose—as you say, you’ve had some bad experiences, and sadly—as in so many areas of modern life—spiritualism is not immune from those seeking to take advantage for material gain. However, I do feel as I would be letting myself down if I did not pick you up on some points which you have rather glibly made without a sound understanding of the facts.

“If spiritualism is complete bosh, as you say, than it must come as some surprise to you that it has risen to prevalence now. Not a product of the war, as you seemed to be suggesting, but, in fact, a movement steadily gaining acceptance over the course of the last seventy-five years—along with many other burgeoning branches of the sciences.

“Furthermore, spiritualism has a growing and dedicated following of people of all classes—including many eminent doctors, surgeons and chemists. Dr Charles Richet, whom you may recall was recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology, is a devoted advocate of the spiritualist cause.” I watched as Price’s eyes lowered, falling once again upon my dishevelled clothing. “Out of interest, sir, what is it that you do?”

I paused in silence; aware that I had been thwarted. Anxiously tugging at my shirt collar, I realised it had come away from its stud.

“I don’t work.”

“I see…” Price returned with a look of satisfaction. “Then perhaps there are people better placed to make these judgements than yourself?

“In any case, I don’t suppose professional people are in the habit of attempting to discredit themselves, so why on earth would they make such stories up?”

I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray. “Well, I suppose…” I said ruminatively, “because it gives dull people something to talk about at dinner parties?

“After all, it is surely more compelling to say that you gave a donation to see a demonstration of the mystical and heard a ghostly voice emanating from another realm than it is to say that you paid to sit in the den of some fusty char-woman and listened to a girl talking from behind a curtain?”

At this, Harry Price looked wildly at me and shook his head. Without another word, he turned to the seat on his far side and collected his ledger. Opening the book, he took up his pencil and set about scratching words into it with such force that it made manifest his inner fury.

We continued in silence. The journey was becoming tedious, with nothing to mark the passage of time save for those occasions when the train stopped at a derelict provincial station.

Soon the air in the carriage became cold to the point where there was frost upon both our breaths. Whilst my companion continued to strain his pencil nib, I went about assiduously draining my hipflask. I have no doubt that Price was annoyed by this—as, occasionally, I would suffer from a fit of the hiccups and he would glance my way, muttering some low invective.

Settling back into the uncomfortable horsehair seat, I pulled up the collar of my fur coat and wrapped it around my cheeks.

Staring out at the darkened shapes blurring past the window, my mind naturally turned to thoughts of Broadstairs and what the town and its inhabitants might offer. It was with this still in my mind that my eyes closed and I fell into a deep sleep…

I awoke with a start—jolted back to consciousness by what sounded like a fist banging hard on the glass partition which separated my compartment from the outer corridor.

As I glanced about the compartment, it occurred to me that I may have been asleep for some time. I was alone once again; and the notion struck me that, since I had not met anyone else on the train, the sound I had heard must have been Price alerting me to the train’s arrival at Broadstairs. I got to my feet and wiped the sleeve of my coat through the condensation that had built up on the window. However, although I could sense that the train was moving slowing and might be coming into a station, I was unable to confirm this, since the darkness outside the window was now complete.

Opening the door to the corridor, I pushed my head out and caught a glimpse of what I took to be a train-guard exiting one of the darkened compartments further along.

“I say!” I shouted out, but the man did not seem to hear, and I watched as he opened the door of another cabin and disappeared inside. Leaving my compartment, I went down the corridor after him, but as I approached that section of the train it was suddenly plunged into darkness.

In the gloom before me, I heard the sound of a compartment door slide open and the creak of wooden floorboards, as someone passed onto them directly ahead of where I was standing. Stepping back, I paused, waiting for my eyes to accustom themselves to the shadows. As they did, I could make out a figure standing motionless ahead. A pale face, partly shadowed by the visor of an old-fashioned guard’s hat, stared expressionlessly back at me, mouth agog. In the half-light, the figure’s complexion seemed grey and, yet, so unlined as to suggest a youth of no more than seventeen years. As he moved forward towards me, I registered an impish glint from his dark eyes and watched as his mouth closed.

“Hello?” I said, dropping back further down the corridor.

Moving furtively towards me, the youth ran his tongue across his lower lip. “You ’eard me then?”

“What do you mean?”

“I knocked you up. You was asleep. I knocked on the glass.”

“Oh?” I replied uneasily. “That was you? Tell me, where are we?”

“End of the line.”

“Sorry?”

“Comin’ into Ramsgate again, sir.”

“Ramsgate?” I queried. “But, I was supposed to be going to Broadstairs.”

“You missed it twice then,” the guard replied shortly. “When you was asleep.”

“But…” I protested, “it says Broadstairs on my ticket. Why did no one wake me?”

The youth shrugged his shoulders: “Not my job, is it?”

There was a distant screech of the brakes and a resultant tremor, which shook through the train. Thrown forward, I fell heavily onto the youth, who pushed me back. With a hiss from the cylinders, we had come to a full stop.

“I need to get to Broadstairs. I’m expected. Please.”

“There’s nothin’ I can do, sir,” he replied curtly. “Won’t get another train now—but it ain’t far.”

“But…”

“You need to get off now,” he said firmly, “I ’ave to put down the blinds and put the lamps out.”

If I was at all prone to self-pity, I would have been greatly rattled that, by falling asleep, my first attempt at subterfuge had resulted in a rather awkward truth. The youth edged past me into another cabin and went about pulling the blinds down over the windows. Feeling at something of a loss, I turned and drifted back down the corridor.

Re-entering my compartment, I collected my belongings and lingered for a moment, looking through the window. Outside, the darkness mingled with billowing clouds of steam lifting from the train’s pistons.

I picked up my hipflask from its bed of newsprint and I screwed the lid back on. Returning it to the inner pocket of my jacket, I re-buttoned the fur coat and reached up to retrieve my bag and hat.

Stepping down onto the platform’s edge, I was struck by a strange tightening sensation in my stomach. Looking across at the deserted station floor, it suddenly occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into.