Then he got up. '
"I see," he said softly. "You want me to run away, do you? You never came from the police. You never came from Charters or Merrivale. I know where you come from. And you know all about it. Yes, I think I shall get away after all. Now, my friend, hand me back that bag. If you don't, I'll set up an alarm and bring the whole place down on us… and you'll have to prove who you are."
Whr-e-e-e went the guard's whistle outside.
At our left there was a door labelled `Gentlemen.' Serpos, I think, was too stunned to resist or even cry out, for I dropped the bag on the floor and hustled him through that door. Inside there were several cubicles with doors stretching from the floor nearly to the roof. A good heave shot him through into one of them, and I closed the door on him. Above the handle there was a little nickelled dial round which ran the polite inscription, `Occupied' or `Vacant.' That dial must turn in order to let the handle turn and let anybody out. I took my halfpenny and wedged it down into the dial against `Occupied,' so that the handle could not be turned from inside.
His howl rose up, followed by a furious bang on the door, just as I slipped out into the waiting-room, picked up the bag, and made with no great haste for the train. The dim platform was now deserted; it had closed up, like a theatre, at the end of our disturbance. Although the train was in motion, it was gliding slowly. I wanted to let most of those flashing windows roll past and get into a carriage near the end, so that my arrival should not be noticed.
But even a second's delay was too long. In the last carriage of the train I spotted an empty first-class compartment. I pulled open the door, and was running along beside it to get purchase for a jump inside, when there was a shout from inside the waiting-room. Out of the door popped a little man in shirt-sleeves, with a green shade over his eyes. And at the same time my friend the station-master came hurrying round the corner. The man with the green shade howled at him.
"Sir," he said, "there's a clergyman shut up in the lavatory using the most 'orrible language that — "
The rest of it was lost in the slam of the compartment door when I jumped inside, and in the deepening rattle and click of the wheels. We were flying past an anaemic gas-lamp: I could not tell whether they had seen me. But, as we swept out of the station, I took off my helmet and poked my head round the edge of the door to risk a backward look. They did not seem to be much excited. Nevertheless, I saw the station-master pointing to the room which housed the telegraph-office.
If they had seen me, they could telegraph or telephone ahead and get me without fuss. Even if they had not, I was sick as a dog of this infernal masquerading as a policeman; I wanted to get into decent clothes again. It was absolutely necessary to get rid of the policeman's outfit: if anyone on this train saw me, and the alarm was later flashed through, it would be all up. Evelyn was bringing me a spare coat, and Evelyn was somewhere on this train. But I could not go scouting through the train in this rig to look for her..
Serpos's valise, of course. It would probably contain a change of clothes. Momentarily the thought occurred to me that it might contain only another clerical disguise: a prospect so hideous as to make me physically queasy in the stomach. But that did not matter, for a clerical outfit meant merely a black coat, and black coats look much alike, and I was already wearing an ordinary dark blue suit.