A Christmas Mystery: The Story of Three Wise Men | Page 3

out
of the window as the frozen meadows and bits of river and willows
raced past. A dead silence fell on them. McCurdie broke it with another
laugh and took a whiskey flask from his hand-bag.
"Have a nip?"
"Thanks, no," said the Professor. "I have to keep to a strict dietary, and
I only drink hot milk and water--and of that sparingly. I have some in a
thermos bottle."

Lord Doyne also declining the whiskey, McCurdie swallowed a dram
and declared himself to be better. The Professor took from his bag a
foreign review in which a German sciolist had dared to question his
interpretation of a Hittite inscription. Over the man's ineptitude he fell
asleep and snored loudly.
To escape from his immediate neighbourhood McCurdie went to the
other end of the seat and faced Lord Doyne, who had resumed his gold
glasses and his listless contemplation of obscure actresses. McCurdie lit
a pipe, Doyne another black cigar. The train thundered on.
Presently they all lunched together in the restaurant car. The windows
steamed, but here and there through a wiped patch of pane a white
world was revealed. The snow was falling. As they passed through
Westbury, McCurdie looked mechanically for the famous white horse
carved into the chalk of the down; but it was not visible beneath the
thick covering of snow.
"It'll be just like this all the way to Gehenna--Trehenna, I mean," said
McCurdie.
Doyne nodded. He had done his life's work amid all extreme
fiercenesses of heat and cold, in burning droughts, in simoons and in
icy wildernesses, and a ray or two more of the pale sun or a flake or
two more of the gentle snow of England mattered to him but little. But
Biggleswade rubbed the pane with his table-napkin and gazed
apprehensively at the prospect.
"If only this wretched train would stop," said he, "I would go back
again."
And he thought how comfortable it would be to sneak home again to
his books and thus elude not only the Deverills, but the Christmas
jollities of his sisters' families, who would think him miles away. But
the train was timed not to stop till Plymouth, two hundred and
thirty-five miles from London, and thither was he being relentlessly
carried. Then he quarrelled with his food, which brought a certain
consolation.

* * * * *
The train did stop, however, before Plymouth--indeed, before Exeter.
An accident on the line had dislocated the traffic. The express was held
up for an hour, and when it was permitted to proceed, instead of
thundering on, it went cautiously, subject to continual stoppings. It
arrived at Plymouth two hours late. The travellers learned that they had
missed the connection on which they had counted and that they could
not reach Trehenna till nearly ten o'clock. After weary waiting at
Plymouth they took their seats in the little, cold local train that was to
carry them another stage on their journey. Hot-water cans put in at
Plymouth mitigated to some extent the iciness of the compartment. But
that only lasted a comparatively short time, for soon they were set
down at a desolate, shelterless wayside junction, dumped in the midst
of a hilly snow-covered waste, where they went through another weary
wait for another dismal local train that was to carry them to Trehenna.
And in this train there were no hot-water cans, so that the compartment
was as cold as death. McCurdie fretted and shook his fist in the
direction of Trehenna.
"And when we get there we have still a twenty miles' motor drive to
Foullis Castle. It's a fool name and we're fools to be going there."
"I shall die of bronchitis," wailed Professor Biggleswade.
"A man dies when it is appointed for him to die," said Lord Doyne, in
his tired way; and he went on smoking long black cigars.
"It's not the dying that worries me," said McCurdie. "That's a mere
mechanical process which every organic being from a king to a
cauliflower has to pass through. It's the being forced against my will
and my reason to come on this accursed journey, which something tells
me will become more and more accursed as we go on, that is driving
me to distraction."
"What will be, will be," said Doyne.
"I can't see where the comfort of that reflection comes in," said

Biggleswade.
"And yet you've travelled in the East," said Doyne. "I suppose you
know the Valley of the Tigris as well as any man living."
"Yes," said the Professor. "I can say I dug my way from Tekrit to
Bagdad and left not a stone unexamined."
"Perhaps, after all," Doyne remarked, "that's not quite the way to know
the East."
"I never wanted to know the modern East," returned the