alked a little farther;
then I told him the time of the train and left him.

He turned up at Euston, a little after twelve. We went down together. It
was getting on for one when we left the station at the other end, and
then we began the tramp across the Weald to the inn. A little to my
surprise (for I had begun to expect unaccountable behaviour from him) we
reached the inn without Rooum having dodged about changing places with
me, or having fallen cowering under a gorse-bush, or anything of
that kind. Our talk, too, was about work, not molecules and osmosis.

The inn was only a roadside beerhouse--I have forgotten its name--and all
its sleeping accomodation was the one double-bedded room. Over the head
of my own bed the ceiling was cut away, following the roof-line; and the
wallpaper was perfectly shocking--faded bouquets that made V's and A's,
interlacing everywhere. The other bed was made up, and lay across the
room.

I think I only spoke once while we were making ready for bed, and that
was when Rooum took from his black hand-bag a brush and a torn nightgown.

"That's what you always carry about, is it?" I remarked; and Rooum
grunted something: Yes ... never knew where you'd be next ... no harm,
was it? We tumbled into bed.

But, for all the lateness of the hour, I wasn't sleepy; so from my own
bag I took a book, set the candle on the end of the mantel, and began
to read. Mark you, I don't say I was much better informed for the reading
I did, for I was watching the V's on the wallpaper mostly--that, and
wondering what was wrong with the man in the other bed who had fallen
down at a touch in the subway. He was already asleep.

Now I don't know whether I can make the next clear to you. I'm quite
certain he was sound asleep, so that it wasn't just the fact that he
spoke. Even that is a little unpleasant, I always think, any sort of
sleep-talking; but it's a very queer sort of sensation when a man
actually answers a question that's put to him, knowing nothing whatever
about it in the morning. Perhaps I ought not to have put that question;
having put it, I did the next best thing afterwards, as you'll see in a
moment ... but let me tell you.

He'd been asleep perhaps an hour, and I woolgathering about the
wallpaper, when suddenly, in a far more clear and loud voice than he ever
used when awake, he said:

_"What the devil is it prevents me seeing him, then?"_

That startled me, rather, for the second time that e