Robert Barr - Vintage Mysteries - 70+ Stories in One Volume (Thriller Classics Collection)

'Then who put up the coin?'

'Douglas Sanderson,' I replied, looking at him sidewise as I mentioned the name. It had apparently no effect upon him. He wrinkled his brow for a moment, then said:—

'Well, if you never heard of Baxter, I never heard of Sanderson.'

This led me to suspect that Douglas Sanderson did not give me his own name, and doubtless the address with which he had furnished me was merely temporary. I did not cable to him from America regarding the success of the expedition, because I could not be certain it was a success until I was safely on English ground, and not even then, to tell the truth. Anyhow, I wished to leave no trail behind me, but the moment the Arontic reached Liverpool, I telegraphed Sanderson to meet us that evening at my flat.

He was waiting for me when Wyoming Ed and I entered together. The old man was quite evidently in a state of nervous tension. He had been walking up and down the room with hands clenched behind his back, and now stood at the end farthest from the door as he heard us approach, with his hands still clasped behind his back, and an expression of deep anxiety upon his rugged face. All the electric lamps were turned on, and the room was bright as day.

'Have you not brought him with you?' he cried.

'Brought him with me?' I echoed. 'Here is Wyoming Ed!'

The old man glared at him for a moment or two stupefied, then moaned:—

'Oh, my God, my God, that is not the man!'

I turned to my short-haired fellow traveller.

'You told me you were Wyoming Ed!'

He laughed uneasily.

'Well, in a manner of speaking, so I have been for the last five years, but I wasn't Wyoming Ed before that. Say, old man, are you acting for Colonel Jim Baxter?'

Sanderson, on whom a dozen years seemed to have fallen since we entered the room, appeared unable to speak, and merely shook his head in a hopeless sort of way.

'I say, boys,' ejaculated the ex-convict, with an uneasy laugh, half-comic, half-bewildered, 'this is a sort of mix-up, isn't it? I wish Colonel Jim was here to explain. I say, Boss,' he cried suddenly, turning sharp on me, 'this here misfit's not my fault. I didn't change the children in the cradle. You don't intend to send me back to that hell-hole, do you?'

'No,' I said, 'not if you tell the truth. Sit down.'

The late prisoner seated himself in a chair as close to the door as possible, hitching a little nearer as he sat down. His face had taken on a sharp, crafty aspect like that of a trapped rat.

'You are perfectly safe,' I assured him. 'Sit over here by the table. Even if you bolted through that door, you couldn't get out of this flat. Mr. Sanderson, take a chair.'

The old man sank despondently into the one nearest at hand. I pressed a button, and when my servant entered, I said to him:—

'Bring some Cognac and Scotch whisky, glasses, and two syphons of soda.'

'You haven't got any Kentucky or Canadian?' asked the prisoner, moistening his lips. The jail whiteness in his face was now accentuated by the pallor of fear, and the haunted look of the escaped convict glimmered from his eyes. In spite of the comfort I had attempted to bestow upon him, he knew that he had been rescued in mistake for another, and for the first time since he left prison realised he was among strangers, and not among friends. In his trouble he turned to the beverage of his native continent.

'Bring a bottle of Canadian whisky,' I said to the servant, who disappeared, and shortly returned with what I had ordered. I locked the door after him, and put the key in my pocket.

'What am I to call you?' I asked the ex-convict.

With a forced laugh he said; 'You can call me Jack for short.'

'Very well, Jack, help yourself,' and he poured out a very liberal glass of the Dominion liquor, refusing to dilute it with soda. Sanderson took Scotch, and I helped myself to a petit verre of brandy.

'Now, Jack,' I began, 'I may tell you plainly that if I wished to send you back to prison, I could not do so without incriminating myself. You are legally dead, and you have now a chance to begin life anew, an opportunity of which I hope you will take advantage. If you were to apply three weeks from today at the prison doors, they would not dare admit you. You are dead. Does that console you?'

'Well, squire, you can bet your bottom dollar I never thought I'd be pleased to hear I was dead, but I'm glad if it's all fixed as you say, and you can bet your last pair of boots I'm going to keep out of the jug in future if I can.'

'That's right. Now, I can promise that if you answer all my questions truthfully, you shall be given money enough to afford you a new beginning in life.'

'Good enough,' said Jack briefly.

'You were known in prison as Wyoming Ed?'

'Yes, sir.'

'If that was not your name, why did you use it?'

'Because Colonel Jim, on the train, asked me to do that. He said it would give him a pull in England to get me free.'

'Did you know Wyoming Ed?'

'Yes, sir, he was one of us three that held up the train.'

'What became of him?'

'He was shot dead.'

'By one of the passengers?'

There was silence, during which the old man groaned, and bowed his head. Jack was studying the floor. Then he looked up at me and said:—

'You don't expect me to give a pal away, do you?'

'As that pal has given you away for the last five years, it seems to me you need not show very much consideration for him.'

'I'm not so sure he did.'

'I am; but never mind that point. Colonel Jim Baxter shot Wyoming Ed and killed him. Why?'

'See here, my friend, you're going a little too fast. I didn't say that.'

He reached somewhat defiantly for the bottle from Canada.

'Pardon me,' I said, rising quietly, and taking possession of the bottle myself, 'it grieves me more than I can say to restrict my hospitality. I have never done such a thing in my life before, but this is not a drinking bout; it is a very serious conference. The whisky you have already taken has given you a bogus courage, and a false view of things. Are you going to tell me the truth, or are you not?'

Jack pondered on this for a while, then he said:—

'Well, sir, I'm perfectly willing to tell you the truth as far as it concerns myself, but I don't want to rat on a friend.'

'As I have said, he isn't your friend. He told you to take the name of Wyoming Ed, so that he might blackmail the father of Wyoming Ed. He has done so for the last five years, living in luxury here in London, and not moving a finger to help you. In fact, nothing would appal him more than to learn that you are now in this country. By this time he has probably received the news from the prison doctor that you are dead, and so thinks himself safe for ever.'

'If you can prove that to me—' said Jack.

'I can and will,' I interrupted; then, turning to Sanderson, I demanded:—

'When are you to meet this man next?'

'Tonight, at nine o'clock,' he answered. 'His monthly payment is due, and he is clamouring for the large sum I told you of.'

'Where do you meet him? In London?'

'Yes.'

'At your master's town house?'

'Yes.'

'Will you take us there, and place us where we can see him and he can't see us?'

'Yes. I trust to your honour, Mr. Valmont. A closed carriage will call for me at eight, and you can accompany me. Still, after all, Mr Valmont, we have no assurance that he is the same person this young man refers to.'

'I am certain he is. He does not go under the name of Colonel Jim Baxter, I suppose?'

'No.'

The convict had been looking from one to the other of us during this colloquy. Suddenly he drew his chair up closer to the table.

'Look here,' he said, 'you fellows are square, I can see that, and after all's said and done, you're the man that got me out of clink. Now, I half suspicion you're right about Colonel Jim, but, anyhow, I'll tell you exactly what happened. Colonel Jim was a Britisher, and I suppose that's why he and Wyoming Ed chummed together a good deal. We called Jim Baxter Colonel, but he never said he was a colonel or anything else. I was told he belonged to the British army, and that something happened in India so that he had to light out He never talked about himself, but he was a mighty taking fellow when he laid out to please anybody. We called him Colonel because he was so straight in the back, and walked as if he were on parade. When this young English tenderfoot came out, he and the Colonel got to be as thick as thieves, and the Colonel won a good deal of money from him at cards, but that didn't make any difference in their friendship. The Colonel most always won when he played cards, and perhaps that's what started the talk about why he left the British army. He was the luckiest beggar I ever knew in that line of business. We all met in the rush to the new goldfields, which didn't pan out worth a cent, and one after another of the fellows quit and went somewhere else. But Wyoming Ed, he held on, even after Colonel Jim wanted to quit. As long as there were plenty of fellows there, Colonel Jim never lacked money, although he didn't dig it out of the ground, but when the population thinned down to only a few of us, then we all struck hard times. Now, I knew Colonel Jim was going to hold up a train. He asked me if I would join him, and I said I would if there wasn't too many in the gang. I'd been into that business afore, and I knew there was no greater danger than to have a whole mob of fellows. Three men can hold up a train better than three dozen. Everybody's scared except the express messenger, and it's generally easy to settle him, for he stands where the light is, and we shoot from the dark. Well, I thought at first Wyoming Ed was on to the scheme, because when we were waiting in the cut to signal the train he talked about us going on with her to San Francisco, but I thought he was only joking. I guess that Colonel Jim imagined that when it came to the pinch, Ed wouldn't back out and leave us in the lurch: he knew Ed was as brave as a lion. In the cut, where the train would be on the up grade, the Colonel got his lantern ready, lit it, and wrapped a thin red silk handkerchief round it. The express was timed to pass up there about midnight, but it was near one o'clock when her headlight came in sight. We knew all the passengers would be in bed in the sleepers, and asleep in the smoking car and the day coach. We didn't intend to meddle with them. The Colonel had brought a stick or two of dynamite from the mines, and was going to blow open the safe in the express car, and climb out with whatever was inside.