Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 6,432 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works.

Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 6,432 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works.
would know, of course, at the station that a policeman had run past at the last minute.  I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap, but the man was there, and I didn’t like to move out of the carriage for other people to notice.  So I sat on.  We came to St. Polten at last.  The man in my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the seat.  We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took the cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness.  I thought:  ’I shall get across the frontier now.’  I took my own cap out and found the moustache Luigi gave me; rubbed my clothes as clean as possible; stuck on the moustache, and with some little ends of chalk in my pocket made my eyebrows light; then drew some lines in my face to make it older, and pulled my cap well down above my wig.  I did it pretty well—­I was quite like the man who had got out.  I sat in his corner, took up his newspaper, and waited for Amstetten.  It seemed a tremendous time before we got there.  From behind my paper I could see five or six policemen on the platform, one quite close.  He opened the door, looked at me, and walked through the carriage into the corridor.  I took some tobacco and rolled up a cigarette, but it shook, Harz lifted the ivy twig, like this.  In a minute the conductor and two more policemen came.  ‘He was here,’ said the conductor, ‘with this gentleman.’  One of them looked at me, and asked:  ‘Have you seen a policeman travelling on this train?’ ‘Yes,’ I said.  ‘Where?’ ‘He got out at St. Polten.’  The policeman asked the conductor:  ‘Did you see him get out there?’ The conductor shook his head.  I said:  ‘He got out as the train was moving.’  ‘Ah!’ said the policeman, ‘what was he like?’ ‘Rather short, and no moustache.  Why?’ ‘Did you notice anything unusual?’ ‘No,’ I said, ’only that he wore coloured trousers.  What’s the matter?’ One policeman said to the other:  ’That’s our man!  Send a telegram to St. Polten; he has more than an hour’s start.’  He asked me where I was going.  I told him:  ‘Linz.’  ‘Ah!’ he said, ’you’ll have to give evidence; your name and address please?’ ‘Josef Reinhardt, 17 Donau Strasse.’  He wrote it down.  The conductor said:  ‘We are late, can we start?’ They shut the door.  I heard them say to the conductor:  ’Search again at Linz, and report to the Inspector there.’  They hurried on to the platform, and we started.  At first I thought I would get out as soon as the train had left the station.  Then, that I should be too far from the frontier; better to go on to Linz and take my chance there.  I sat still and tried not to think.

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Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.