"Help me out of the carriage at once," the lady with the stare panted.

"I consider the whole thing most disgraceful. I shall report it to the Company."

"What's the matter, Joe?" an inspector called out, threading his way through the crowd of people, that had commenced to collect at the door of the compartment.

"I'm blessed if I know!" the collector said. "The honly explanation I can give is that a gent who was seated here has dissolved--the hot weather has melted him like b.u.t.ter!"

At this there was a shout of laughter, the inspector slammed the door, the guard whistled, and the next moment the train was off.

As soon as the train was well out of the station Hamar repeated the words he had used, backwards, and he was once again visible.

The effect of his reappearance amongst them was even more striking than that of his previous disappearance.

"Take it away--take it away!" the lady opposite him shouted, throwing up her hands to ward him off. "It's there again! Take it away! I shall die--I shall go mad!"

"How hideous! How diabolical!" a stout, elderly man said in slow, measured tones, as if he were reading his own funeral service. "It must be the devil! The devil! Ha!" and burying his face in his hands, he indulged in a loud fit of mirthless laughter.

"Why don't you do something? Talk theology to it, exorcise it," a remarkably plain woman, in the far corner of the carriage said, in highly indignant tones to the clergyman. "As usual, whenever there is something to be done, it is woman who must do it!"

She got up, and casting a look of infinite scorn at the clergyman--whose condition of terror prevented him uttering even the one telling, biting word--Suffragette--that had risen and stuck in his throat--raised her umbrella, and, before Hamar could stop her, struck it vigorously at him.

"Ghost, demon, devil!" she cried. "I know no fear! Begone!" And the point of her umbrella coming in violent contact with Hamar's waistcoat, all the breath was unceremoniously knocked out of him; and with a ghastly groan he rolled off his seat on to the floor, where he writhed and grovelled in the most dreadful agony, whilst his a.s.sailant continued to stab and jab at him.

In all probability, she would have succeeded, eventually, in reaching some vital part of his body, had not one of the frenzied pa.s.sengers pulled the communication-cord and stopped the train!

CHAPTER XIX

A SERIES OF MISADVENTURES

With the advent of the guard, Hamar's a.s.sailant was dragged off him, and he was locked up in a separate compartment, "to be given in charge," so the indignant official announced, directly they got to Brighton. But Hamar ordained it otherwise. As soon as he had sufficiently recovered from the effects of the severe castigation the female furioso had inflicted on him, he became invisible, and when the train drew up at the Brighton platform, and a couple of policemen arrived to march him on, he was nowhere to be found! This was his first experiment with the newly acquired property. "In future," he said to himself, "before I try any tricks, I'll take very good care there are no Suffragettes about."

In London there was, of course, no need for him ever to pay fares. All he had to do, was to become invisible as soon as the taxi stopped, calmly step out of the vehicle, and walk away. As for meals, he was able to enjoy many--gratis. He simply walked into a restaurant, fed on the very best, and then disappeared. Of course, he could not repeat the trick in the same place, and cautious though he was, he was at last caught. It appears that a description of him had been circulated among the police, and that private detectives were employed to watch for him in the princ.i.p.al hotels and restaurants. Consequently, directly he entered the grill room at the Piccadilly Hotel, he was arrested and handcuffed before he had time to swallow a pill.

He was now in a most unpleasant predicament--the tightest corner he had ever been in. Supposing he could not escape--his sentence would be at the least two years' penal servitude--what would happen? Curtis and Kelson would never work the show without him. Curtis would give himself entirely up to eating and drinking, Kelson would marry Lilian Rosenberg; the compact with the Unknown would be broken; and after that--he dare not think. He must escape! He must get at the pills! The police took him away in a taxi, and all the time he sat between them, he struggled desperately to squeeze his hands through the small, cruel circle that held them. "It's all right for Curtis and Kelson!" he said to himself, "all right at least--now! They know nothing! They have never tried to think what the breaking of the compact means! Their weak, silly minds are entirely centred on the present! The present!

d.a.m.n the present! They are fools, idiots, imbeciles who think only of the present--it's the future--the future that matters!" He sc.r.a.ped the skin off his wrists, he sweated, he swore! And it was not until one of the detectives threatened to rap him over the head, that he sullenly gave in and sat still.

The taxi drew up in front of the Gerald Road Police Station, and Hamar was conducted to an ante-room, prior to being taken before the inspector. Just as a policeman was about to search him, he made one last desperate effort.

"Look here," he said, "if I pledge you my word I'll not attempt to do anything, will you let me have my hands--or at least one of my hands--free a moment. Some grit has got in my eye and I cannot stand the irritation."

"That game won't work here," one of the detectives said, "you should keep your eyes shut when there's dust about, or else not have such protruding ones."

Hamar threatened to report him to the Home Secretary for brutal conduct, but the detective only laughed, and Hamar had to submit to the mortification of being searched.

"What are these?" a detective said, fingering the seaweed pills gingerly.

"Stomachic pills!" Hamar said bitterly, "they are taken as a digestive after meals. You look dyspeptic--have one."

"Now, none of your sauce!" the detective said, "you come along with me,"--and Hamar was hauled before the inspector.

"Can I go out on bail?" Hamar asked.

"Certainly not," the inspector replied.

"Then I shan't give you my name and address," Hamar said. "I shan't tell you anything."

The inspector merely shrugged his shoulders, and after the charge sheet was read over, Hamar was conducted to a cell.

"This is awful," he said, "what the deuce am I to do! To send for Curtis and Kelson will be fatal, and it will be equally fatal to leave them in ignorance of what has happened to me. I am, indeed, in the horns of a dilemma. I must get at those pills."

Up and down the floor of the tiny cell he paced, his mind tortured with a thousand conflicting emotions. And then, an idea struck him. He would ask to be allowed to see his lawyer.

"Cotton's the man," he said to himself, "he will get the pills for me!"

The inspector, after satisfying himself that Cotton was on the register, rang him up, and after an hour of terrible suspense to Hamar, the lawyer briskly entered his cell.

They conferred together for some minutes, and having arranged the method of defence, Cotton was preparing to depart, when Hamar whispered to him--

"I want you to do me a particular favour. In the top right hand drawer of the chest of drawers in my bedroom, in c.o.c.kspur Street, I have left a red pill-box. These pills are for indigestion. I simply can't do without them. Will you get them for me?"

"What, to-night?" the lawyer asked dubiously.

"Yes, to-night," Hamar pleaded. "I'll make it a matter of business between us--get me the pills before eight o'clock, and you have 1000 down. My cheque book is in the same drawer."

The lawyer said nothing, but gave Hamar a look that meant much!

Again there was a dreadful wait, and Hamar had abandoned himself to the deepest despair when Cotton reappeared. He shook hands with his client, slipping the pills into the latter's palm. Whilst the lawyer was pocketing his cheque, Hamar gleefully swallowed a pill, and crying out "Bakra--naka--takso--mana,"--vanished!

"Heaven preserve us! What's become of you?" Cotton exclaimed, putting his hand to his forehead and leaning against the wall for support. "Am I ill or dreaming?"

"Anything wrong, sir?" a policeman inquired, opening the cell door and looking in. "Why, what have you done with the prisoner--where is he?"

"I have no more idea than you," the lawyer gasped. "He was talking to me quite naturally, when he suddenly left off--said something idiotic--and disappeared."

Hamar did not dally. He quietly slipped through the open door, and darting swiftly along a stone pa.s.sage, found his way to the entrance, which was blocked by two constables with their backs to him.

"I'll give the brutes something to remember me by," Hamar chuckled, and, taking a run, he kicked first one, and then the other with all his might, precipitating them both into the street. He then sped past them--home.

Hamar, by astute inquiries, learned that the police had decided to hush up the affair, not being quite sure how they had figured, or, indeed, what had actually occurred. As to Cotton, the shock he had undergone, at seeing Hamar suddenly melt away before his eyes, was so great that he went off his head, and had to be confined in an asylum.

After this adventure Hamar shunned restaurants, and manipulating his new property sparingly, and with the utmost caution, warned Kelson and Curtis to do the same.

"I'll bet anything," he said to them, "it was a put-up job on the part of the Unknown--a cunning device to make us break the compact."

"Oh, we'll be careful enough as far as that goes," Curtis growled.