"Duck," I said to Evelyn, and reached up after Charters's bag on the rack. "As soon as we stop, duck!"
The man in the bowler hat had already raised his arm and made a gesture towards our compartment. One of the officials had let down a window with a bang, and was leaning out to shout along the platform.
"I'll get the inspector," I said. "We're witnesses, you know."
I opened the door, and bumped out into a concealing screen of porters. The bag I pulled after me with one hand, and Evelyn with the other. The man in the bowler hat was a little way down the platform. I could have sworn he saw me face to face, and they must have received my description by this time. Yet he was marching towards that compartment without even glancing at me, though for a moment Evelyn and I were full under the light of the platform lamps. Why he paid no attention I was not to learn (with profanity) until later. We turned round a bookstall, and made for the stairs leading down into the tunnel under the vast stretch of Temple Meads. Even when we emerged into the station on the other side, there was still no sign of pursuit. We looked at each other. Evelyn seemed a trifle dazed.
"He looked at us;" she said in an awed voice. "He looked right at you, the police-inspector did, and he didn't even notice. There's nobody following us now. It isn't right. How do you explain it?"
I admitted that I was past explaining anything in this mix-up. "Except that Serpos made a real haul and didn't get away with it. Serpos's behaviour is even more obscure. There must have been eight or ten thousand pounds in the bottom of that bag."
"All that lovely money," said Evelyn dreamily, "that we've got to leave behind… I say, do you suppose the detective's not paying any attention to you means that H.M. has wangled it at last, and they're not chasing you any longer?"
"It's possible, yes. But I tell you with all sincerity that I am not going to drop into a police station and inquire. Besides, it has suddenly occurred to me that we're not even in Charters's jurisdiction any longer. We're not in Devon. We're in either Somerset or Gloucestershire, depending on the side of the river."
Evelyn inspected me. "The Man of the Forty Races," she said tenderly. "Darling, will you for God's sake find the nearest lavatory and take off that parson's outfit and get into Charters's coat? Canonicals don't become you: you've got a look as though you had just robbed the poor box. Also, it's suddenly occurred to me that the spectacle of a hatless clergyman showing up at the Cabot Hotel with only one suitcase and a wench without a wedding-ring is going to queer our pitch most awfully."
I told her she had a low mind, and she inquired, with candour, whether I knew anyone who hadn't.