伯特伦旅馆之谜13
时间：2026-01-04 07:42:20
（单词翻译:单击）
Chapter Eight
I
The Irish Mail rushed through the night. Or, more correctly, through the
darkness of the early morning hours.
At intervals the diesel engine gave its weird banshee warning cry. It was
travelling at well over eighty miles an hour. It was on time.
Then, with some suddenness, the pace slackened as the brakes came on.
The wheels screamed as they gripped the metals. Slower… slower… The
guard put his head out of the window noting the red signal ahead as the
train came to a final halt. Some of the passengers woke up. Most did not.
One elderly lady, alarmed by the suddenness of the deceleration,
opened the door and looked out along the corridor. A little way along one
of the doors to the line was open. An elderly cleric with a thatch of thick
white hair was climbing up from the permanent way. She presumed he
had previously climbed down to the line to investigate. The morning air
was distinctly chilly. Someone at the end of the corridor said: “Only a sig-
nal.” The elderly lady withdrew into her compartment and tried to go to
sleep again.
Farther up the line, a man waving a lantern was running towards the
train from a signal box. The fireman climbed down from the engine. The
guard who had descended from the train came along to join him. The man
with the lantern arrived, rather short of breath and spoke in a series of
gasps.
“Bad crash ahead…Goods train derailed….”
The engine driver looked out of his cab, then climbed down also to join
the others.
At the rear of the train, six men who had just climbed up the embank-
ment boarded the train through a door left open for them in the last
coach. Six passengers from different coaches met them. With well- re-
hearsed speed, they proceeded to take charge of the postal van, isolating it
from the rest of the train. Two men in Balaclava helmets at front and rear
of the compartment stood on guard, coshes in hand.
A man in railway uniform went forward along the corridor of the sta-
tionary train, uttering explanations to such as demanded them.
“Block on the line ahead. Ten minutes’ delay, maybe, not much more….”
It sounded friendly and reassuring.
By the engine, the driver and the fireman lay neatly gagged and trussed
up. The man with the lantern called out:
“Everything OK here.”
The guard lay by the embankment, similarly gagged and tied.
The expert cracksmen in the postal van had done their work. Two more
neatly trussed bodies lay on the floor. The special mailbags sailed out to
where other men on the embankment awaited them.
In their compartments, passengers grumbled to each other that the rail-
ways were not what they used to be.
Then, as they settled themselves to sleep again, there came through the
darkness the roar of an exhaust.
“Goodness,” murmured a woman. “Is that a jet plane?”
“Racing car, I should say.”
The roar died away….
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