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 principal 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!
Damn the present! They are fools, idiots, imbeciles who think only of
the present--it's the future--the future that matters!" He scraped 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.
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