George and I both advanced past the conference table until we were nearer the desk. The two Directors were seated behind the desk, Filmer in the chair in front of it. Filmer's neck was rigid, his eyes were dark, and the sweat ran down his temples.

'The Conductor, George Burley,' Bill Baudelaire said, 'yesterday gave VIA Rail an account of three acts of sabotage against the race train. Disaster was fortunately averted on all three occasions, but we believe that all these dangerous situations were the work of Alex McLachlan who was acting on your instructions and was paid by you.'

'No,' Filmer said dully.

'Our enquiries are not yet complete,' Bill Baudelaire said, 'but we know that the VIA Rail offices in Montreal were visited three or four weeks ago by a man answering in general to your description who said he was researching for a thesis on the motivations of industrial sabotage. He asked for the names of any railroad saboteurs so that he could interview them and see what made them tick. He was given a short list of people no longer to be employed on the railroads in any capacity.'

Heads would roll, the VIA Rail executive had said. That list, although to be found in every railway station office in the country, should never have been given to an outsider.

'McLachlan's name is on that list,' Bill Baudelaire observed.

Filmer said nothing. The realization of total disaster showed in every line of his body, in every twitch in his face.

'As we said,' Bill Baudelaire went on, 'McLachlan travelled on the train under the name of Johnson. During the first evening, at a place called Cartier, he uncoupled Mr Lorrimore's private car and left it dead and dark on the track. The railroad investigators believe he waited in the vicinity to see the next train along, the regular transcontinental Canadian, come and crash into the Lorrimores' car. He had always been around to watch the consequences of his sabotage in the past: acts he had been sent to prison for committing. When the race train returned to pick up the Lorrimores' car, he simply reboarded and continued on the journey.'

'He shouldn't have done it,' Filmer said.

'We know that. We also know that in speech you continually mixed up Winnipeg with Vancouver. You instructed McLachlan to wreck the train before Winnipeg, when you meant before Vancouver.'

Filmer looked dumbfounded.

'That's right,' Daffodil said, sitting up straight, 'Winnipeg and Vancouver. He got them mixed up all the time.'

'In Banff,' Bill Baudelaire said, 'someone loosened the drain plug on the fuel tank for the boiler that provides steam heat for the train. If it hadn't been discovered, the train would have had to go through a freezing evening in the Rockies without heat for horses or passengers. Mr Burley, would you tell us at first hand about both of these occurrences, please?'

George gave his accounts of the uncoupling and the missing fuel with a railwayman's outrage quivering in his voice.

Filmer looked shrunken and sullen.

'During that last evening,' Bill Baudelaire said, 'you decided to cancel your instructions to McLachlan and you went forward to speak to him. You had a disagreement with him. You told him to do no more, but you had reckoned without McLachlan. He really is a perpetual saboteur. You misunderstood his mentality. You could start him off, but you couldn't stop him. You were responsible for putting him on the train to wreck it, and we will make that responsibility stick.'

Filmer began weakly to protest, but Bill Baudelaire gave him no respite.

'Your man, McLachlan,' he said, 'knocked out the Conductor and left him tied up and gagged in the roomette he had been given in the name of Johnson. McLachlan then put the radio out of order by pouring liquid into it. These acts were necessary, as he saw it, because he had already, at a place called Revelstoke, removed oily waste from the journal-box holding one of the axles under the horse car. One of two things could then happen: if the train crew failed to notice the axle getting red hot, the axle would break, cause damage, possibly derail the train. If it were discovered, the train would stop for the axle to be cooled. In either case, the Conductor would radio to the despatcher in Vancouver, who would radio to the Conductor of the regular train, the Canadian, coming along behind, to tell him to stop, so that there shouldn't be a collision. Is that clear?'

It was pellucid to everyone in the room.

'The train crew,' he went on, 'did discover the hot axle and the engineers stopped the train. No one could find the Conductor, who was tied up in Johnson's roomette. No one could radio to Vancouver as the radio wouldn't work. The only recourse left to the crew was to send a man back along the line to light flares, to stop the Canadian in the old historic way.' He paused briefly. 'McLachlan, a railwayman, knew this would happen, so when the train stopped he went himself along the track, armed himself with a piece of wood and lay in wait for whomever came with the flares.'

Filmer stared darkly, hearing it for the first time.

'McLachlan attacked the man with the flares, but by good fortune failed to knock him out. It was this man here who was sent with the flares.' He nodded in my direction. 'He succeeded in lighting the flares and stopping the Canadian.' He paused and said to me, 'Is that correct?'

'Yes, sir,' I said. Word perfect, I thought.

He went on, The race-train engineers cooled the journal-box with snow and refilled it with oil, and the train went on its way. The Conductor was discovered in McLachlan's roomette. McLachlan did not reboard the train that time, and there will presently be a warrant issued for his arrest. You, Mr Filmer, are answerable with McLachlan for what happened.'

'I told him not to.' Filmer's voice was a rising shout of protest. 'I didn't want him to.'

His lawyers would love that admission, I thought.

'McLachlan's assault was serious,' Bill Baudelaire said calmly. He picked up my X-ray and the doctor's report, and waved them in Filmer's direction. 'McLachlan broke this crewman's shoulder blade. The crewsman has positively identified McLachlan as the man who attacked him. The Conductor has positively identified McLachlan as the passenger known to him as Johnson. The Conductor has suffered concussion, and we have here another doctor's report on that.'

No doubt a good defence lawyer might have seen gaps in the story, but at that moment Filmer was beleaguered and confounded and hampered by the awareness of guilt. He was past thinking analytically, past asking how the crewman had escaped from McLachlan and been able to complete his mission, past wondering what was conjecture with the sabotage and what was provable fact.

The sight of Filmer reduced to sweating rubble was the purest revenge that any of us-Mercer, Daffodil, Val Catto, Bill Baudelaire, George Burley or I-could have envisaged, and we had it in full measure. Do unto others, I thought dryly, what they have done to your friends.

'We will proceed against you on all counts,' the Brigadier said magisterially.

Control disintegrated in Filmer. He came up out of his chair fighting mad, driven to lashing out, to raging against his defeat, to pushing someone else for his troubles, even though it could achieve no purpose.

He made me his target. It couldn't have been a subconscious awareness that it was I who had been his real enemy all along: much the reverse, I supposed, in that he saw me as the least of the people there, the one he could best bash with most impunity.

I saw him coming a mile off. I also saw the alarm on the Brigadier's face and correctly interpreted it.

If I fought back as instinct dictated, if I did to Filmer the sort of damage I'd told the Brigadier I'd done to McLachlan, I would weaken our case.