"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 butter!"
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.
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