A ROPE OF SNOW

Published in The Brisbane Courier, Australia, 16 Dec 1911

RAYMOND NODES turned away from the contemplation of the snowy landscape, and the 'Telegraph' fluttered from his hand. He did not doubt the evidence of his senses; he did not clasp his hand wildly to his brow and ask himself if he were the victim of some strange hallucination. He was too cold-blooded and unimaginative for that. There must be some practical explanation to account for the man sitting opposite to him in the first class carriage. He had not materialised a fellow passenger.

To begin with, though it was Christmas time and the train was consequently full, the compartment had been reserved for him. As a man of means and local influence, he could command that sort of thing. He was going on to the Gate House to dine; he had been detained till the last moment by important business, and his idea had been to dress in the train. He had telephoned to his man to meet him at Whiteley-road with his kit bag and evening clothes. The man was to see that a carriage was attached to the train at Whiteley-road, and the Stationmaster had given the desired assurance. They usually had a spare coach or two there. It was no trouble, and Nodes had more than once done the same thing. He had everything he needed in his bag, even to his safety razor, but that would not be needed, as he had shaved closely that morning.

All the same he wanted to be a little particular, especially as he was going to meet Mary Glynn at the Gate House. He had never been there before—the invitation had come through Mary Glynn's host, Reginald Norfolk. There was no definite engagement between Mary Glynn and Raymond Nodes, but her friends expected her to marry him. Most of them thought she would be a fool if she didn't.

Nodes was not hurrying. The train was pretty sure to be late, as the snow lay so deep along the line. He had the best part of an hour before him yet, and he knew that he should find everything ready, down to the stud in his buttonhole. He did not want to lose the freshness of his toilette; he would leave it till the last moment. There was a lavatory with hot and cold water leading from the carriage. These are the sort of little luxuries that money can buy.

Then Nodes turned to find himself no longer alone. For seated opposite to him was a man about his own size and build, grim, determined, and dirty, and evidently in considerable trouble. He had a wild and hunted look; he suggested many sinister things, accentuated in his case by the queer garments that he was wearing. They consisted mainly of a horrible yellow jacket and knickerbockers, heavy woollen stockings and clumsy boots. Beyond question, the man was an escaped convict.

Nodes did not need anybody to tell him this. By some means or other an escaped convict had found his way into the carriage. The train had been stopped by the deep snowdrifts more than once. It was quite the old-fashioned Christmas weather. This must be the escaped Bransby convict. No doubt he had found his way into the carriage by way of the lavatory during one of the stoppages. He was going to ask Nodes to help him. He smiled at the thought. There was nothing feeling or sentimental about Nodes. He respected the conventions of society too sincerely for that.

"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked. "How did you get here?"

"We will come to that presently," the convict said. "Is it possible you don't recognise me?"

Nodes shook his head. He was not exactly frightened, but the back of his throat was dry. He did not like the grimness of the other's manner. He had expected an appeal to his better nature. Apparently, that formed no part of the intruder's programme.

The convict strode across the carriage in the direction of the lavatory. He was not away long enough to give Nodes a chance to press the alarm bell.

He came back with a wet towel in his hand. He rubbed it vigorously over his face, and turned to Nodes again. A cry came from the latter.

"Good Lord, it's Summers!" he stammered. "Rick Summers! What does this mean?"

"We will come to that presently," the man addressed as Summers said again. "Give me a cigarette. I was lucky enough to get both meat and drink today, and now I fancy a smoke. A merry Christmas to you, dear sir."

Nodes passed over his cigarette case with a shaking hand. Of all the men on the face of the universe at that moment, Richard Summers was the very last he wanted to meet. There were reasons why his heart turned to water; and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth as he looked at the other.

"I am not here by accident," Summers went on. There was a hard, dry grimness in his voice that caused Nodes to wriggle about uneasily on his seat. "I came to meet you. I dragged myself hungry and tired across a whole county to see you. My intention was to call upon you last night. I was actually in the house when Henderson called on business, and you had him in the library. I heard your conversation there. I heard your plans for to-day. I changed my mind. An excellent idea occurred to me, if I could only put it in practice. If possible, I wanted to get on the train with you to-night. As I had heard all your plans discussed, the matter was not quite so difficult. If I could find my way in safety to Whiteley-road Station the thing might he managed. The dark and gloomy time of year was distinctly in my favour. I managed to get to the station and hide myself in the goods shed. How I got here you can easily guess."

"What do you expect to gain by this? Sooner or later you will be—"

"Sooner or later the truth will come out. A man in prison without friends or influence has a poor chance with a man like yourself. But things happen—unexpected accidents take place. A week ago it seemed to me that I had lost everything that made life worth living. I did not care for the future. I was quite resigned to serve my ten years' sentence out. But we hear things even in prison, we get scraps of news, we even see papers sometimes. That is what happened in my case. I saw in a paper that Tom Glynn was dead, that he had died in Paris after a long illness, following on an 'accident.' The 'accident' happened six months ago."

Nodes shivered. Words were precious with him just for the moment.

"I got ten years for the manslaughter of Wilfred Catling," Summers proceeded. "It was a bad case, and the judge was accused of erring on the side of clemency. I killed the best friend I ever had. I killed him because I was desperately hard up for money, and because I knew that he had made a will in my favour. And I killed him so that he should not discover that I had forged a cheque upon his banking account for £500. The jury were induced to believe that there was a violent quarrel, and that blows were exchanged. There was just a possibility that I did not really mean to kill the man whom I loved as a brother, and that saved my neck. But you know all about that, because you gave evidence at the trial. I was duly convicted, and there is an end of it—or rather, there was an end of it. And when my time is up, and I come out of gaol, I shall be free to enjoy the fortune of the man whom I am supposed to have murdered! But it will be too late then—long before that time you will become the husband of Mary Glynn. I could have hanged for all you cared. And I am going to hang you, my friend, hang you with a rope of snow."

"Miss Glynn and myself are not even engaged," Nodes stammered.

"That I am quite prepared to believe," Summers went on. "In the light of recent illumination, I am prepared to believe that she does not know what has happened to me. After the 'accident' to her brother, she went over to Paris with him to see a specialist. She probably made a devoted nurse—whilst she had Tom to look after she could think of nothing else. Very few people knew of the relationship in which we stood to each other. I knew none of her friends. I waited for her to come forward till it was forced upon me that she had turned against me. I had no idea that she had hurried Tom off to Paris. I only gathered that from the newspaper paragraph I was telling you about just now. A lot of things came clear to me as I sat in my cell the last few days. I wrote a letter or two, but no reply came. I decided to try to escape. Luck came my way—and, in short, I am here."

"What do you expect that I can do for you?" Nodes asked timidly.

"Not more than you can help," Summers laughed. "If I had found you alone last night, I might have done something to justify my sentence. I rather fancy that I should have killed you, my friend! But as I listened to your conversation with Henderson, and learnt the facts you told him, another idea occurred to me. I learnt, for instance, how it was that Mary Glynn never came near me. I became quite sure of the way in which poor Wilfred Catling came by his death. Then, as I gathered how you intended to spend this evening—this typical Christmas Eve—and how you were going to get to the Gate House, the whole thing came upon me like an inspiration. Get your kit bag down—it is time you began to dress."

Nodes proceeded to obey. There was something grimly determined about his companion, some suggestion that there was unfortunately worse to follow than this. With a shaking hand he turned kit bag and dressing-case out on the seat. Summers nodded approval behind his cigarette.

"Very good," he said. "Here we have...