“I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter, and sent it whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs.  He kept his footing, gave a view hallo, and came up the staircase hot after me.  Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those bright-coloured pot things—­what are they?”

“Art pots,” suggested Kemp.

“That’s it!  Art pots.  Well, I turned at the top step and swung round, plucked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly head as he came at me.  The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and footsteps running from all parts.  I made a mad rush for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white like a man cook, who took up the chase.  I made one last desperate turn and found myself among lamps and ironmongery.  I went behind the counter of this, and waited for my cook, and as he bolted in at the head of the chase, I doubled him up with a lamp.  Down he went, and I crouched down behind the counter and began whipping off my clothes as fast as I could.  Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were all right, but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin.  I heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the counter, stunned or scared speechless, and I had to make another dash for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile.

“‘This way, policeman!’ I heard someone shouting.  I found myself in my bedstead storeroom again, and at the end of a wilderness of wardrobes.  I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared, as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner.  They made a rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers.  ‘He’s dropping his plunder,’ said one of the young men.  ’He must be somewhere here.’

“But they did not find me all the same.

“I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my ill-luck in losing the clothes.  Then I went into the refreshment-room, drank a little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my position.

“In a little while two assistants came in and began to talk over the business very excitedly and like the fools they were.  I heard a magnified account of my depredations, and other speculations as to my whereabouts.  Then I fell to scheming again.  The insurmountable difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any plunder out of it.  I went down into the warehouse to see if there was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I could not understand the system of checking.  About eleven o’clock, the snow having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer than the previous one, I decided that the Emporium was hopeless, and went out again, exasperated at my want of success, with only the vaguest plans of action in my mind.”

CHAPTER XXIII