The Devil

All straightforward now. It would be still Mr. Dale at Waterloo, depositing the bag at the cloak-room, buying a ticket, and getting into the train with his brown-paper parcel. Only Mr. Dale would get lost on the journey, and a queer shabby customer would emerge at the other end.

But he allowed himself to modify the plan slightly. It was necessary that he should have a good meal and also procure food to take with him, and for these purposes he went to an eating-house in the York Road. This turned out to be just the place he required--a room with tables where diners could sit as long as they chose, a counter spread out with edibles to be absorbed standing, and the company consisting of cabmen from the station ranks, some railway porters, and a few humble travelers.

He ordered a large beef-steak; and he ate like a boa-constrictor, thinking the while: "This ought to stick to my ribs. I can't put away too much now, because it may come to short commons if the luck's against me." Then after the meal there came a temptation to hurry up his program, and get through some of the little difficulties at once. He observed his surroundings. The place was fuller now than when he came in; the atmosphere was thick with tobacco smoke and the steam of hot food; the kitchen was at its busiest; and at the counter the stupid-looking girl in charge was handing over refreshments so fast that it seemed as if soon there would be none left.

He paid a waitress for his supper, and then went into the dark little lavatory behind the room and put on his canvas suit. Coming out into the room again, he intended to say something about having slipped on his overalls for a night job; but nothing of the kind was necessary. Nobody cared, nobody noticed. His difficulty was to make the counter girl attend to him at all. He spoke to her bruskly at last; and then she sold him slices of cold meat, cheese, biscuits, a lot of chocolate and some nuts, with which he filled those two inner pockets of his jacket. They had become his larders now.

There were not more than a dozen passengers in the whole train, and no one on the platform at Waterloo took the faintest notice of him.

No one noticed him three hours later when he left the train at a station short of Manninglea Cross; and soon he was far from other men, striking across the dark country, with the stars high over his head, and his native air blowing into his lungs. He came down over the heath on the Abbey side of the Cross Roads, and reached Hadleigh Wood just before dawn.