Page:The Van Roon (IA thevanroon00snaiiala).pdf/204

 to the platform she raced on ahead of Uncle Si. He was so near-sighted that even had he been less absorbed in his own affairs he would not have been likely to notice her.

June reached the platform well in front of the old man. But the train to Victoria was not in. It arrived two minutes later; by then, Uncle Si had appeared, and they boarded it together. She was careful, however, not to enter the same compartment as the enemy.

Short as the journey was, June had ample time to appreciate that the odds were heavily against her. The mere fact that the cloak-room receipt for the parcel was in the custody of Uncle Si would confer possession upon him; it had only to be presented for the Van Roon to be handed over without a question.

The one chance she had now was to get on well ahead of the old beast, and convince the clerk that in spite of the absence of the ticket the parcel was hers. She knew, however, only too well that the hope of being able to do this was frail indeed—at all events before the holder of the ticket arrived on the scene to claim it.

At Victoria, June dashed out of the train even before it stopped. Running past the ticket collector at the barrier and along the subway she reached the escalator yards in front of Uncle Si, and, in spite of being unused to this trap for the unwary, for Blackhampton's more primitive civilization knew escalators not, she ascended to the street at a pace far beyond the powers of the Old Crocodile. By this means, indeed, she counted on gaining an advantage of several minutes, since it was hardly likely that Uncle Si would trust himself to such a contrivance, and in ignorance of the fact that she was