Presently the man he waited for came out and walked up the platform. He stopped at the book stall and bought a London paper and some magazines. A porter came up, and Bartley Bradstone beckoned to him.
“There is a branch line from here to Paddington, the Great Western station, isn’t there?”
“Yes; but it’s rather a roundabout way, sir,” answered the porter.
“I know,” said Bartley Bradstone, as if he had expected to meet the remark. “But I’m in no particular hurry to reach London. I want to sleep.”
“All right, sir,” said the porter. “Train is due in ten minutes.”
Bartley Bradstone gave him some coppers, then went and took a ticket. The station was comparatively empty by this time, and Seth was too cunning to emerge from his hiding-place, in which he waited, still studying his newspaper, until the train came up.
Then he watched Bartley Bradstone enter a carriage, and, carefully screening himself behind the passers-by, Seth stole gently into a third-class compartment, and, covering his face with his handkerchief, began to snore. The ticket collector came and shook him; but Seth seemed only capable of muttering “London,” and eventually the collector gave it up, remarking:
“Well, you’ll have to pay at the other end, my friend.”
The murky haze of an early autumn morning hung over London, as the train steamed into the terminus. Bartley Bradstone woke—he had fallen into the deep sleep of exhaustion—and got out.
During the journey he had come to a decision as to his movements. He had remembered reading somewhere, in connection with the case of a criminal who had succeeded in evading the most rigorous police search, that there was no place in which a man could conceal himself as in a great city.