In despair I thrust my head under his arm just in time to see the man with the red beard disappearing, brown bag and all, through the place where tickets were collected. To get out and follow him was impossible, for the yokel drew in his great shoulders almost at the same moment that I put my head out, and in so doing wedged me into the window like a plug in a cask, and by the time I could extricate myself the train had cleared the station and was spanking along toward London. CHAPTER XXIV A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH! Here was a pretty kettle of fish! For the first desperate moment wild thoughts of pulling the connecting cord and stopping the train peeped in my brain like the mad faces seen at the windows of an asylum. But as the mad faces vanish at the return of the keeper, so in the next moment wiser counsels prevailed and I was considering the situation with the seriousness which the facts demanded. And first I had to ask myself what could be the red-bearded passenger’s motive for booking to London, and then suddenly changing his plans and getting out at an unimportant country station? Could it be that he was indeed James Mullen, and that he was at his old tricks of covering up his tracks? If he had reason to believe himself shadowed from Southend, he could have done nothing wiser than to alight at Hornchurch. A detective who suspected the traveller’s identity and had watched him enter the train at one end would in all probability telegraph to the police to meet the train at the other end and effect an arrest. By getting out at Hornchurch, Mullen would not only dodge this possible danger, but would, so to speak, force his adversary to come out into the open, for though shadowing can be carried on with small risk of detection in London, where the person so engaged is only a unit in a crowd, a shadower cannot possibly hope to escape notice in a country village. Altogether I had to admit that, even if I had seen the red-bearded man get out at Hornchurch in time for me to follow him, I should have been uncertain how to act. Probably not more than two passengers would be likely to leave the train at such a place, and it would be comparatively easy for a man like Mullen to decide who had legitimate business in the neighbourhood and who had not. Had I been one of these passengers I should have brought myself under his direct notice, and this I was anxious to avoid, as it was quite possible that, in order to obtain evidence of his identity, circumstances might render it necessary for me to come in personal contact with him. So far as I knew, he was at that time unaware of my connection with Green and Quickly, whose action in constituting themselves private detectives he might reasonably suppose had been taken upon their own responsibility, and in the hope of enriching themselves by obtaining the offered reward.