It was fifteen minutes to eleven when they reached the station. The train was drawn up at the platform. Mrs. Driscoll and Norah had taken their seats in a third-class carriage, and Moriarty was seeing the luggage stowed in the van.
French took the tickets, chose a first-class compartment, and the hand-bags and wraps having been stowed in it, they walked up and down the platform, waiting and watching.
There was one point in their favour. Mr. Giveen's meanness amounted with this gentleman almost to a monomania. He would do incredible things to save a half-penny. Would he incur the expense of pursuit? Cannibalism among the passions is a law in the mental world. One vice often devours another vice, if the other vice stands between the devourer and its objective. Were the jaws of Mr. Giveen's spite wide enough to engulf his meanness? This was a question that Mr. French was debating vaguely in his mind as he paced the platform with Miss Grimshaw and Effie.
A regiment of live Christmas turkeys were being entrained, not in silence; the engine was blowing off steam; the rattle of barrows, the clank of milk-cans—all these noises made it impossible to hear the approach of wheels on the station road.
"I believe we'll do it," said Mr. French, looking at his watch, which pointed to five minutes to the hour. "Anyhow, we'll be off in five minutes, and I'll break the beast's head at Tullagh if he does follow us."
He walked down the train to the third-class carriage where the servants were, and at the door of which Moriarty was colloguing with Norah.
He told Moriarty in a few words of the pursuit, and then returned to his own compartment.
"Take your sates, take your sates for Tullagh, Kildare, and Dublin!"
The van door was shut on the turkeys, the last of the luggage was in the train, the last door was banged to, and the train was just beginning to move, when out of the ticket-office entrance rushed Mr. Giveen with a ticket in his hand. He had asked the ticket-collector where Mr. French had booked to, and, being told Tullagh, had done likewise.
He had just time to reach the nearest carriage and jump in when Moriarty, who had been observing everything, interposed.