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,
and only ceased to feel like the Nietzschean Over-man, when I saw the
train running out of the station.
Even then I did not lose my head. It occurred to me almost at once
that, in the event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a great
advantage in not taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have
done so would have been an error from which only luck had saved me. As
it was, I had already been very indiscreet in my inquiries about
Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not fail to remember
me. Now the chances were against his coming into the case. I did not go
into the station therefore at all, I made no demonstration of having
missed the train, but walked quietly past, down the road, crossed the
iron footbridge, and took the way back circuitously by White’s
brickfields and the allotments to the way over Clayton Crest to
Two-Mile Stone, where I calculated I should have an ample margin for
the 6.13 train.
I was not very greatly excited or alarmed then. Suppose, I reasoned,
that by some accident the curate goes to that drawer at once: will he
be certain to miss four out of ten or eleven sovereigns? If he does,
will he at once think I have taken them? If he does, will he act at
once or wait for my return? If he acts at once, will he talk to my
mother or call in the police? Then there are a dozen roads and even
railways out of the Clayton region, how is he to know which I have
taken? Suppose he goes straight at once to the right station, they will
not remember my departure for the simple reason that I didn’t depart.
But they may remember about Shaphambury? It was unlikely.
I resolved not to go directly to Shaphambury from Birmingham, but to go
thence to Monkshampton, thence to Wyvern, and then come down on
Shaphambury from the north. That might involve a night at some
intermediate stopping-place but it would effectually conceal me from
any but the most persistent pursuit. And this was not a case of murder
yet, but only the theft of four sovereigns.