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There’s no question of a man slipping past in a fog, for it was perfectly clear yesterday evening. I’ve questioned the men on duty at both ends, and they swear that nobody can have gone in or out.
    â€œBut I wasn’t satisfied with that. It struck me that perhaps, by some miracle, somebody might have got into the tunnel and been run over. So, as soon as I heard about the driver’s report, I sent a search party through, to look for a body, or bits of one. Of course, they found nothing of the kind. I never for a moment expected that they would. You may take it from me, inspector, that there was nobody in the tunnel yesterday evening.”
    â€œThen how do you account for the driver’s report?” Arnold asked.
    The station-master shrugged his shoulders.
    â€œTunnels are queer places,” he replied. “You’ve never been through one, except in a train, I suppose? And then you’re nice and comfortable, and you run through so quick that you don’t have time to notice things. If you’d ever been through on foot, you wouldn’t want to repeat the experience. It’s pitch dark, to begin with, and then it’s usually full of smoke and steam, unless the wind happens to be blowing through it.
    â€œI can imagine a driver, even an experienced man, imagining that he saw a light. Maybe a reflection in the window of his cab, or something like that. He’d naturally pull up, for we believe in safety first on the railway, whatever they may think on the roads. And when he saw that it wasn’t a red light at all, but only a reflection, he’d go ahead again.
    â€œBut he’d have to account for slowing down. And he wouldn’t care to make himself look a fool by saying that he thought he saw a red light when there hadn’t been one there at all. So he’d make up a yarn like this, about the red light that turned to green, and his fireman would back him up. And that, you’ll find, is about the truth of it.”
    After this conversation with the station-master at Blackdown, Arnold continued his journey to London. The engine-driver’s report seemed to be disposed of. The train had certainly slowed down in the tunnel, that at least was an established fact. But only because of an hallucination on the part of the driver. He had seen a red and a green light where none could have existed. Rather an uncanny happening, if those lights had been seen at the moment of Sir Wilfred’s death. Could the flash of the pistol have had anything to do with it? By some extraordinary trick of reflection, could the driver have seen this flash as a red light ahead of him? Not under ordinary circumstances, Arnold imagined. But, as the station-master had said, tunnels were queer places.
    He arrived at Cannon Street, and there made a few further inquiries. As a result of these he learnt that passengers had to show their tickets at the barrier before obtaining access to the platforms. The ticket inspector who had been on duty the previous evening happened to know Sir Wilfred by sight. He remembered punching his ticket, the return half of a first-class to Stourford. At the barrier, Sir Wilfred had extracted the ticket from a leather wallet, from which at the same time he took a pound note. The ticket inspector believed that, after his ticket had been examined, Sir Wilfred had put it back in the wallet. When he reached the platform, he stopped and spoke to the guard, and they had walked up the train together. Sir Wilfred had been carrying an attaché-case, but no other luggage.
    This confirmed Turner’s statement, but threw no fresh light on the mystery of the ticket. In fact, it rather tended to deepen that mystery. If Sir Wilfred had put it back in his wallet, the possibility of it having fallen out at Stourford was removed. Arnold made a mental note of this, as one of the puzzling but possibly irrelevant features of the case. He then walked to Shrubb Court, and entered the