"And how did you get away?" I asked; it was a perfunctory question.
"How did I get away.—Oh.—Yes, of course. A ship, on the seventh day. Yes, there were three days of calm after the storm; comparative calm, but for the swell. So I had the week he had intended for me to have, to the full. The ship's carpenter came alongside in a dinghy, and filed through one of the bars. I never told them how I came to be there. I said it was for a bet, and that I was to have been fetched by my friends the next day. When I got on board I collapsed. I'd just come out of hospital the day you first saw me here." He rose wearily. "Well, I mustn't keep you. Thank you more than I can say, for having listened."
It seemed strange that he should be thanking me.
We walked towards the door of the restaurant together; outside, the London street was empty under a melancholy drizzle of rain.
"You had better give me your name and your address," I said, pricked on to it by a curiously conventional conscience.
"No, no," he said, backing away from me. "You've been kind, you mustn't ever be implicated."
"Why, what are you going to do?" I cried.
He turned, his old wideawake crammed down over his hair, and his face half buried in the upturned collar of his coat, but I saw the sudden gleam of his eyes by the light of a street lamp.
"Think out something worse to do to him," he mumbled rapidly; "something worse to do to him."