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Updated: May 4, 2025
I stood in the road watching the wheels of the absurd village vehicle, the yellow cut-under, disappear. The old Major called back to me; his voice seemed detached, eerie with the thin laugh in it. "I thought him a particularly villainous-looking creature!" It was an absurd remark.
The hoof-marks of the horse had displaced the dust where it had several times changed position. "And that's not all," Marquis continued. "Something has happened to the cut-under here!" I was now closely beside him. "It was broken down, perhaps, or some accident to the harness?" "No," he replied. "The wheel tracks are here broadened, as though they had skidded on a turn.
The little stations hummed with bustle and noise; big farm wagons rattled away and raced with cut-under or omnibus; people walked with quick steps; the baggage-masters called cheerily to the trainmen, and the brakemen laughed good-bys to rollicking girls.
He did not come on and I went back. "What is it?" I said. He answered, still stooping above the track. "The cut-under stopped here." "How do you know that?" I asked, for it seemed hardly possible to determine where a wheeled vehicle had stopped. "It's quite clear," he replied. "The horse has moved about without going on." I now saw it.
Footprints invariably show it, and one learns thereby, unerringly, the direction of the attack." He rose, his hand still extended and upon my arm. "There is only one possible explanation," he added. "Something happened in the cut-under to throw it violently about in the road, and it happened with the horse undisturbed and the vehicle standing still.
"Taking the position of the standing horse, it will be the front wheels of the cut-under that have made, this widened track; the wheels under the driver's seat, and not the wheels under the guest seat, in the rear of the vehicle. There has been a violent struggle in this cut-under, but it was a struggle that took place wholly in the front of the vehicle."
But, one must remember, Marquis was an old acquaintance frequently seen about in the world. To thus, on the spot so to speak, draft into my service the first gentleman I found, was precisely what any one would have done. It was probable, after all, that there had been some reason why the cut-under had taken the other road, and Madame Barras was quite all right.
The drizzle and mist blew in under the top of the cut-under as they drove rapidly into town, and bright little drops sparkled on the fair hair above the new editor's forehead and on the long lashes above the new editor's cheeks. She shook these transient gems off lightly, as she paused in the doorway of the office at the top of the rickety stairway. Mr.
Marquis regarded me, I thought, with wonder. "The devil, man!" he said. "They couldn't leave her behind." "The danger would be too great to them?" "No," he said, "the danger would be too great to her." At this moment an object before us in the road diverted our attention. It was the cut-under and the horse.
I was at the extreme of a deadly anxiety about Madame Barras. It seemed to me, now, certain that some gang of criminals having knowledge of the packet of money had waylaid the cut-under. Proud of my conclusion, I put the inquiry to Sir Henry as we hurried along. If we weren't too late! He stopped suddenly like a man brought up at the point of a bayonet. "My word!"
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