I bowed again. I didn't see in the least, but he spoke as if the point was so obvious that I thought it better to let the subject drop. I could only imagine that he must be holding some official position, the importance of which he probably overrated.
We drifted off into the discussion of one or two other topics; settling down eventually to our respective newspapers. I can't say I followed mine with any keen attention. My brain was too much occupied with my own affairs to allow me to take in very much of what I read. I just noticed that we were engaged in a rather heated discussion with Germany over the future of Servia, and that a well-meaning but short-sighted Anarchist had made an unsuccessful effort to shoot the President of the American Steel Trust.
Of my own affairs I could find no mention, beyond a brief statement to the effect that I was still at liberty. There was not even the usual letter from somebody claiming to have discovered my hiding-place, and for the first time since my escape I began to feel a little neglected. It was evident that as a news topic I was losing something of my first freshness.
The last bit of the journey from Maidenhead onwards seemed to take us an unconscionably long time. A kind of fierce restlessness had begun to get hold of me as we drew nearer to London, and I watched the fields and houses flying past with an impatience I could hardly control.
We rushed through Hanwell and Acton, and then suddenly the huge bulk of Wormwood Scrubbs Prison loomed up in the growing dusk away to the right of the line. It was there that I had served my "separates"—those first ghastly six months of solitary confinement which make even Princetown or Portland a welcome and agreeable change.
At the sight of that poisonous place all the old bitterness welled up in me afresh. For a moment even my freedom seemed to have lost its sweetness, and I sat there with my hands clenched and black resentment in my heart, staring out of those grim unlovely walls. It was lucky for George that he was not with me in the carriage just then, for I think I should have wrung his neck without troubling about any explanations.
I was awakened from these pleasant reflections by a sudden blare of light and noise on each side of the train. I sat up abruptly, with a sort of guilty feeling that I had been on the verge of betraying myself, and letting down the window, found that we were steaming slowly into Paddington Station. In the farther corner of the carriage my distinguished friend Sir George Frinton was beginning to collect his belongings.
I just had time to pull myself together when the train stopped, and out of the waiting line of porters a man stepped forward and flung open the carriage door. He was about to possess himself of my fellow passenger's bag when the latter waved him aside.
"You can attend to this gentleman," he said. "My own servant is somewhere on the platform." Then turning to me, he added courteously: "I wish you good-day, sir. I am pleased to have made your acquaintance. I trust that we shall have the mutual pleasure of meeting again."
I shook hands with him gravely. "I hope we shall," I replied. "It will be a distinction that I shall vastly appreciate."