"'The Money Market. Continued from page 2. British Railways,'" he
announced.

"Extraordinary," murmured Carlyle.

"Not very," said Carrados. "If someone dipped a stick in treacle and
wrote 'Rats' across a marble slab you would probably be able to
distinguish what was there, blindfold."

"Probably," admitted Mr. Carlyle. "At all events we will not test the
experiment."

"The difference to you of treacle on a marble background is scarcely
greater than that of printers' ink on newspaper to me. But anything
smaller than pica I do not read with comfort, and below long primer I
cannot read at all. Hence the secretary. Now the accident, Louis."

"The accident: well, you remember all about that. An ordinary Central
and Suburban passenger train, non-stop at Knight's Cross, ran past the
signal and crashed into a crowded electric train that was just
beginning to move out. It was like sending a garden roller down a row
of handlights. Two carriages of the electric train were flattened out
of existence; the next two were broken up. For the first time on an
English railway there was a good stand-up smash between a heavy
steam-engine and a train of light cars, and it was 'bad for the coo.'"

"Twenty-seven killed, forty something injured, eight died since,"
commented Carrados.