Mail Train
Cast & Crew
Walter Forde
Gordon Harker
Alastair Sim
Phyllis Calvert
Edward Chapman
Charles Oliver
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
As the long-winded Scotland Yard Inspector Hornleigh dictates his autobiography to Percy Bingham, his long-suffering and slightly dense sergeant, he confides that he expects to be put in charge of a new case investigating fifth columnists. Instead, the commissioner orders Hornleigh and Bingham to enter the Army as privates and uncover a gang of scroungers who have cost the government thousands of pounds every year. Much to Hornleigh's chagrin, his rival, Inspector Blow, is assigned to the espionage case, and the next ten days pass in misery for Hornleigh and Bingham as they undergo basic training. After a particularly grueling march, Bingham is given an afternoon's leave and becomes enamored of barmaid Daisy Johnson, whom he takes boating. The next day, Blow visits Hornleigh and Bingham to ask to whom they have been talking, as the previous night, his officers intercepted a shortwave radio transmission to Germany detailing the pair's undercover investigation. Hornleigh caustically dismisses Blow, then prompts Bingham to admit that he revealed his identity to Daisy. After Bingham confronts Daisy, who denies telling anyone, Hornleigh follows the barmaid as she goes to see dentist C. L. Wilkinson. The dentist shoos Daisy away, but that night, Hornleigh and Bingham sneak into his surgery and discover evidence that he is a spy. Wilkinson returns while they are still there and is quietly murdered without Hornleigh or Bingham seeing the killer. Helen, the dentist's wife, then returns and charms Bingham, who does not notice her picking his pocket and stealing the evidence. Hornleigh deduces that Wilkinson was murdered because he was about to desert the spy ring and, after piecing together several clues, he and Bingham wind up at a boys school in the countryside. There, Hornleigh pretends to be a history teacher and is hired by Dr. Alfred Kerbishley, the headmaster and leader of the spy ring. With the help of Mr. Tomboy, the village postmaster, Hornleigh learns that Kerbishley mails a registered letter to the same address every day. Hornleigh and Bingham arrange to board the night mail train on which the latest letter will travel to London, but, unknown to them, Helen and Kerbishley have discovered their plans, and Kerbishley murders Tomboy in an attempt to recover the letter. Unable to retrieve the letter, Kerbishley telephones his contact as he is about to board the train and warns him about Hornleigh, who is posing as a mail sorter. Hornleigh finds the letter as he is sorting the mail but must leave it when he receives a note summoning him to the aid of Bingham, who is being held captive in his compartment by Helen and Kerbishley. Hornleigh and Bingham succeed in capturing the two spies, and then discover that Joe Busby, the mail supervisor, is secretly in league with Kerbishley and has been using a hidden shortwave transmitter to relay the information that Kerbishley supplies in the registered letters. With the case solved and the spies jailed, Hornleigh and Bingham return to Scotland Yard and are pleased to learn that Blow has been transferred to the scrounging case.
Director
Walter Forde
Cast
Gordon Harker
Alastair Sim
Phyllis Calvert
Edward Chapman
Charles Oliver
Raymond Huntley
Percy Walsh
David Horne
Peter Cawthorne
Willy Hatch
Betty Jardine
O. B. Clarence
John Salew
Cyril Cusack
Bill Shine
Silvia Cecil
E. Turner
Edward Underdown
Crew
Edward Black
Jack Cox
Arthur Crabtree
R. E. Dearing
Val Guest
Frank Launder
Louis Levy
J. O. C. Orton
Maurice Ostrer
D. Pierce
Alfred Roome
B. C. Sewell
Vetchinsky
S. Wiles
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The onscreen credits listed above and details about the first fifteen minutes of this film, which were missing from the print viewed, were taken from a cutting continuity deposited with the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection, located at the UCLA Arts-Special Collections Library. Although the opening credits indicate that Twentieth Century Productions, Ltd. copyrighted the film, there is no entry for the picture in the Catalog of Copyright Entries. After the opening credits, a written foreword reads, "The mail train incidents in this story are entirely fictional. G.P.O. safeguards would preclude any such happenings. No reflection is made on any member of the post office staff." The film, which was released in the United Kingdom as Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It, was the sixth and final entry in the "Inspector Hornleigh" series. For more information about the series, please see the entry for Inspector Hornleigh in AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40; F3.5368.
