I returned to the train full of a horrible desire to see with my own

eyes a certain corpse. Bit by bit the breakdown gang had removed the

whole of the centre part of the shattered carriage. I thrust myself

into the group, and--we all looked at each other. Nobody, alive or

dead, was to be found.

"He, too, must have got out at Sittingbourne," I said at length.

"Ay!" said the guard.

My heard swam, dizzy with dark imaginings and unspeakable suspicions.

"He has escaped; he is alive!" I muttered savagely, hopelessly. It was

as if a doom had closed inevitably over me. But if my thoughts had

been legible and I had been asked to explain this attitude of mine

towards a person who had never spoken to me, whom I had seen but

thrice, and whose identity was utterly unknown, I could not have done

so. I had no reasons. It was intuition.

Abruptly I straightened myself, and surveying the men and the

background of ruin lighted by the fitful gleams of lanterns and the

pale glitter of a moon half-hidden by flying clouds, I shouted out: "I want a cab. I have to catch the Calais boat. Will somebody please

direct me!"

No one appeared even to hear me. The mental phenomena which accompany

a railway accident, even a minor one such as this, are of the most

singular description. I felt that I was growing angry again. I had a

grievance because not a soul there seemed to care whether I caught the

Calais boat or not. That, under the unusual circumstances, the steamer

would probably wait did not occur to me. Nor did I perceive that there

was no real necessity for me to catch the steamer. I might just as

well have spent the night at the Lord Warden, and proceeded on my

journey in the morning. But no! I must hurry away instantly!

Then I thought of the jewel-box.

"Where's my jewel-box?" I demanded vehemently from the guard, as

though he had stolen it.

He turned to me.

"What's that you're carrying?" he replied.

All the time I had been carrying the jewel-box. At the moment of the

collision I must have instinctively clutched it, and my grasp had not

slackened. I had carried it to the waiting-room and back without

knowing that I was doing so!

This sobered me once more. But I would not stay on the scene. I was

still obsessed by the desire to catch the steamer. And abruptly I set

off walking down the line. I left the crowd and the confusion and the

ruin, and hastened away bearing the box.

I think that I must have had no notion of time, and very little notion

of space. For I arrived at the harbour without the least recollection

of the details of my journey thither. I had no memory of having been

accosted by any official of the railway, or even of having encountered

any person at all. Fortunately it had ceased to rain, and the wind,

though still strong, was falling rapidly.




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