ack, at the old lady's projected nose
and quivering hand, and then with swift, clean movements I had the
little drawer open, four sovereigns in my pocket, and the drawer
shut again. Then again at the window--they were still talking.

That was all right. He might not look in that drawer for hours. I
glanced at his clock. Twenty minutes still before the Birmingham
train. Time to buy a pair of boots and get away. But how I was to
get to the station?

I went out boldly into the passage, and took my hat and stick. . . .
Walk past him?

Yes. That was all right! He could not argue with me while so
important a person engaged him. . . . I came boldly down the steps.

"I want a list made, Mr. Gabbitas, of all the really DESERVING
cases," old Mrs. Verrall was saying.

It is curious, but it did not occur to me that here was a mother
whose son I was going to kill. I did not see her in that aspect
at all. Instead, I was possessed by a realization of the blazing
imbecility of a social system that gave this palsied old woman
the power to give or withhold the urgent necessities of life from
hundreds of her fellow-creatures just according to her poor, foolish
old fancies of desert.

"We could make a PROVISIONAL list of that sort," he was saying,
and glanced round with a preoccupied expression at me.

"I MUST go," I said at his flash of inquiry, and added, "I'll be
back in twenty minutes," and went on my way. He turned again to
his patroness as though he forgot me on the instant. Perhaps after
all he was not sorry.

I felt extraordinarily cool and capable, exhilarated, if anything,
by this prompt, effectual theft. After all, my great determination
would achieve itself. I was no longer oppressed by a sense
of obstacles, I felt I could grasp accidents and turn them to
my advantage. I would go now down Hacker Street to the little
shoemaker's--get a sound, good pair of boots--ten minutes--and then to
the railway-station--five minutes more--and off! I felt as efficient
and non-moral as if I was Nietzsche's Over-man already come. It did
not occur to me that the curate's clock might have a considerable
margin of error.

Section 6

I missed the train.

Partly that was because the curate's clock was slow, and partly
it was due to the commercial obstinacy of the shoemaker, who would
try on another pair after I had declared my time was up. I bought
the final pair however, gave him a wrong address for the return of
the old ones,