“You had better take a cab to Euston, you have just time. If he is there stop him, or else follow him, and bring him back. If necessary, get the police to help you, but if you can bring him back without, so much the better. I’m afraid the £23 is not all; it may turn out to be a big robbery when we go through his book. I must trust to your judgment. Take some money with you, £20, in case of emergency. Be quick or you will be late. Telegraph to me how you succeed.”
It was a word and a blow. A quarter of an hour later my hansom dashed into the yard at Euston just as the warning bell for the 1:30 train was sounding.
“Where for, sir?” asked a porter. “Any luggage?”
I did not know where I was for, and I had no luggage.
I rushed on to the platform and looked anxiously up and down. It was a scene of confusion. Groups of non-travellers round the carriage doors were beginning to say a last good-bye to their friends inside. Porters were hurling their last truck-loads of luggage into the vans; the guard was a quarter of the way down the train looking at the tickets; the newspaper boys were flitting about shouting noisily and inarticulately; and the usual crowd of “just-in-times” were rushing headlong out of the booking-office and hurling themselves at the crowded train.
I was at a loss what to do. It was impossible to say who was there and who was not. McCrane might be there or he might not. What was the use of my—
“Step inside if you’re going,” shouted a guard.
I saw a porter near the booking-office door advance towards the bell.
At the same moment I saw, or fancied I saw, at the window of a third-class carriage a certain pale face appear momentarily, and, with an anxious glance up at the clock, vanish again inside.
“Wait a second,” I cried to the guard, “till I get a ticket.”