Page:Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1951-03).djvu/11

 lunching so well, but I should have dearly liked a cigarette.

As time lagged onward I had strange thoughts. Privation and past disappointments filled me with fear. My first feeling of exultation was gone, and instead I was seized with the dread that this wonderful post in Cornwall might turn out a hoax, after all. Suppose the lawyer was not at Paddington to meet me? In that case I would be not only penniless, but homeless as well, doomed to wander about London streets all night with a suitcase in my hand. For I had told my landlady I was going, and she, after the manner of her kind, had promptly let my bedroom to someone else. So if Mr. Trusibond failed to put in an appearance, I had nowhere in the wide world to go or to stay.

I kept my appointment to the stroke of the clock, and great was my relief when my eye fell upon Mr. Trusibond at the ticket window, a self-contained and saturnine figure of a man. He made no sign of recognition when he saw me, nor did he come forward to greet me in any way. Instead, I observed him methodically taking his place in the group of intending passengers at the window, some Treasury notes in his hand. I realized that he had, with legal caution, withheld the purchase of my ticket until he saw me on the station ready to go. With a vengeance that was the boot on the other foot. I thought of my own earlier fears, and could now afford to smile at myself.

In a moment or two Mr. Trusibond joined me where I stood waiting, and handed me the railway ticket without speaking a word. I looked at it—it was a ticket to Penzance, single and third-class. Having given this over, the lawyer fell into line alongside of me, and in silence we proceeded down the platform towards the waiting train.

■ nearing the time of departure. The hands of the station clock moved forward. Ten minutes to ten. People hurried along, frantically looking for seats—the usual throng of pallid souls with crude luggage who are always to be

found on English railway stations at night. Through a swinging door I espied an empty third-class apartment, and installed myself within. Mr. Trusibond looked through the door at me, like a man in some doubt what to do. I noticed that he still held the change from my ticket in his hand—a note, some silver coins, and a copper or two. He turned them over with a doubtful finger, as if weighing some pecuniary point. A bell clanged on the station near him, and seemed to quicken his thought. Hastily he singled out the note from the coins, and held it through the open window to me.

"Ten shillings!" he said suddenly; "to be deducted from your wages—for expenses on the journey down." He spoke indistinctly, like a man talking to himself. "The fare Colonel Gravenall will pay."

I thanked him, and he turned as if to leave me; then changed his mind and came back.

"No! Half-a-guinea. Better make it half-a-guinea while I'm about it. A more professional sum—for—for one who has been acquainted with the law." He made this explanation in the most distant voice, as he pressed another sixpence into my palm. But I thought his face lightened a little as he spoke.

Again he fell back, and I thought this time he had gone for good, but again he returned.

"Well, I'll bid you good-bye, Mr. Haldham, and—and—good luck." And with that he thrust out his hand.

We shook hands, and he went away. A bell clanged again. Paddington Station and its officials began to slide away. The train gathered speed, and we steamed out into the night.

Sleep came to me in snatches on the journey down, stretched on the slippery-cushioned seat. At Exeter I went for some tea in the refreshment room, and when I returned to the carriage it was nearly full up. The fresh, passengers were Cornish tin-miners, on their way to work. They smoked shag in cutty pipes, and talked horse-racing in a slow Cornish