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 he himself had been looking out of the window in Elstree station.

But if so, and the man had invaded his privacy with sinister design, why should he have plunged at once into a position of utter impotence? No one flattened out under the low seat of a first-class railway carriage is capable of active violence without a preliminary struggle to free himself, during which he would be at the mercy of his intended victim. The only design that Beaumanoir could attribute to him was that he would presently wriggle to the front and use a pistol.

He sat and eyed the motionless boot, and then an impulse, swift and irresistible, seized him.

“Come out of that, you beggar!” he cried; and, stooping down, he gripped the boot, wondering whether he was to be rewarded with a haul or whether he would have to laugh at himself for grabbing someone’s discarded footgear. But the first touch told him that here was no empty boot, and, his fingers closing on it like a vise, he put forth all his strength and dragged its wearer, snarling and spluttering, out on to the open floor. There was no sign of a pistol, but as a measure of