"I'll attend to it myself," said the station-master, "and I'll have this platform clear in two seconds. Compartment? Yes.
You can take him into the waiting-room, if you like. There'll be nobody there."
Serpos was wiping the corner of his eye, and he tried to jerk his arm away as I hustled him across to the waiting-room. It was a dim place where, at the moment, there did not even seem to be anyone behind the window of the booking-office. I was relieved to see that a half-open door led to the street outside.
"All right," I said. "Get out! Through that door. Quick, before they see you!"
Serpos had sat down limp as a laundry-bag on a bench against the wall, under a peeling poster declaring the merits of Something-on-Sea. He had his hands pressed to his face, and there were hollows between the ligaments down the backs of them. I thought he was sobbing, but he was only cursing in a low, cold, shaky voice. From between his hands came a rambling monologue.
"Damn them. Damn them. I thought the police were fools. I knew the police were fools. That's what h-hurts. I always said that a clever man — It wasn't the Antrim woman, either. If I hadn't wasted all that time, if I'd gone right away, instead of hiding that car, and s-spending three hours laying a false trail"
I felt rather sorry for him, and anyhow, I had the swag safe enough in the black bag. "Do you hear?" I said. "I'm letting you go. Get out, can't you?"
He rolled up a white wet face, earnest in its great spectacles. A whole fusillade of slamming doors ran along the line of the train.
"No," he said, "no, I'll take my medicine. I'll go back with you. Then maybe"
He rolled up his head again, for a flash I could have sworn I saw a crafty look in that glazed brown eye; something shrewd and fighting behind his limp manner. It occurred to me that this pose of repentance was much overdone. If at that moment I had interpreted the look in his eye, I might have had the key to the whole murder-case. But his thoughts appeared to go back on something I had said, and quite suddenly his face grew less muddled, and, it had a shine like pale butter.