As he saw me off he gave me a piece of advice.  ’Get out of these clothes as soon as you reach London.  Private Tomkins will frank you out of Bradfield, but it mightn’t be a healthy alias in the metropolis.’

At eleven-thirty I was safe in the train, talking the jargon of the returning soldier with half a dozen of my own type in a smoky third-class carriage.  I had been lucky in my escape, for at the station entrance and on the platform I had noticed several men with the unmistakable look of plainclothes police.  Also—­though this may have been my fancy—­I thought I caught in the crowd a glimpse of the bagman who had called himself Linklater.

CHAPTER TEN

The Advantages of an Air Raid

The train was abominably late.  It was due at eight-twenty-seven, but it was nearly ten when we reached St Pancras.  I had resolved to go straight to my rooms in Westminster, buying on the way a cap and waterproof to conceal my uniform should anyone be near my door on my arrival.  Then I would ring up Blenkiron and tell him all my adventures.  I breakfasted at a coffee-stall, left my pack and rifle in the cloak-room, and walked out into the clear sunny morning.

I was feeling very pleased with myself.  Looking back on my madcap journey, I seemed to have had an amazing run of luck and to be entitled to a little credit too.  I told myself that persistence always pays and that nobody is beaten till he is dead.  All Blenkiron’s instructions had been faithfully carried out.  I had found Ivery’s post office.  I had laid the lines of our own special communications with the enemy, and so far as I could see I had left no clue behind me.  Ivery and Gresson took me for a well-meaning nincompoop.  It was true that I had aroused profound suspicion in the breasts of the Scottish police.  But that mattered nothing, for Cornelius Brand, the suspect, would presently disappear, and there was nothing against that rising soldier, Brigadier-General Richard Hannay, who would soon be on his way to France.  After all this piece of service had not been so very unpleasant.  I laughed when I remembered my grim forebodings in Gloucestershire.  Bullivant had said it would be damnably risky in the long run, but here was the end and I had never been in danger of anything worse than making a fool of myself.

I remember that, as I made my way through Bloomsbury, I was not thinking so much of my triumphant report to Blenkiron as of my speedy return to the Front.  Soon I would be with my beloved brigade again.  I had missed Messines and the first part of Third Ypres, but the battle was still going on, and I had yet a chance.  I might get a division, for there had been talk of that before I left.  I knew the Army Commander thought a lot of me.  But on the whole I hoped I would be left with the brigade.  After all I was an amateur soldier, and I wasn’t certain of my powers with a bigger command.