“Now then, let’s keep cool,” said Lafcadio to himself. “I mustn’t slam the door to; they might hear it in the next carriage.”
He drew the door towards him, in the teeth of the wind, and then shut it quietly.
“He has left me his frightful sailor hat; in another minute I should have kicked it after him, but he has taken mine along with him and that’s enough. That was an excellent precaution of mine—cutting out my initials.... But there’s the hatter’s name in the crown, and people don’t order a beaver hat of that kind every day of the week.... It can’t be helped, I’ve played now.... Perhaps they’ll think it an accident.... No, not now that I’ve shut the door.... Stop the train?... Come, come, Cadio! no touching up! You’ve only yourself to thank.
“To prove now that I’m perfectly self-possessed, I shall begin by quite quietly seeing what that photograph is the old chap was examining just now.... Miramar! No desire at all to go and visit that.... It’s stifling in here.”
He opened the window.
“The old brute has scratched me ... I’m bleeding.... He has made me very ill. I must bathe it a little; the lavatory is at the end of the corridor, on the left. Let’s take another handkerchief.”
He reached down his portmanteau from the rack above him and opened it on the seat, in the place where he had been sitting.
“If I meet anyone in the corridor I must be calm.... No! my heart’s quiet again. Now for it!... Ah! his coat! I can easily hide it under mine. Papers in the pocket! Something to while away the time for the rest of the journey.”
The coat was a poor threadbare affair of a dingy liquorice colour, made of a harsh-textured and obviously cheap material; Lafcadio thought it slightly repulsive; he hung it up on a peg in the small lavatory into which he locked himself; then, bending over the basin, he began to examine himself in the glass.