There were two ugly furrows on his neck; one, a thin red streak, starting from the back of his neck, turned leftwards and came to an end just below the ear; the other and shorter one, was a deep scratch just above the first; it went straight up towards the ear, the lobe of which it had reached and slightly torn. It was bleeding, but less than might have been expected; on the other hand, the pain, which he had hardly felt at first, began to be pretty sharp. He dipped his handkerchief into the basin, staunched the blood and then washed the handkerchief. “Not enough to stain my collar,” thought he, as he put himself to rights; “all is well.”
He was on the point of going out; just then the engine whistled; a row of lights passed behind the frosted window-pane of the closet. Capua! The station was so close to the scene of the accident that the idea of jumping out, running back in the dark and getting his beaver back again, flashed, dazzling, on his mind. He regretted his hat, so soft and light and silky, at once so warm and so cool, so uncrushable, so discreetly elegant. But it was never his way to lend an undivided ear to his desires—nor to like yielding—even to himself. More than all, he hated indecision, and for ten years he had kept on him, like a fetish, one of a pair of cribbage dice, which Baldi had given him in days gone by; he never parted from it; it was there, in his waistcoat pocket.
“If I throw six,” he said to himself as he took it out, “I’ll get down.”
He threw five.
“I shall get down all the same. Quick, the victim’s coat!... Now for my portmanteau....”
He hurried to his compartment.
Ah! how futile seem all exclamations in face of the extravagance of fact! The more surprising the occurrence, the more simple shall be my manner of relating it. I will therefore say in plain words, merely this—when Lafcadio got back to his compartment, his portmanteau was gone!
He thought at first that he had made a mistake, and went out again into the corridor.... But no! It was the right place. There was the view of Miramar.... Well, then? He sprang to the window and could not believe his eyes. There, on the station platform, and not very far from his carriage, his portmanteau was calmly proceeding on its way in company of a strapping fellow who was carrying it off at a leisurely walk.
Lafcadio’s first instinct was to dash after him; as he put out his hand to open the door, the liquorice coat dropped on to the floor.
“Tut! tut! in another moment I should have put my foot in it.... All the same, that rascal would go a little quicker if he thought there was a chance of my coming after him. Can he have seen ...?”