He unbolted the door and listened—slipped out into the deserted passage, pulling the door shut behind him. Coming stealthily round the corner to the stairhead, he brought up short at sight of an old club servant who knelt in the middle of the steps doing the brass rods and whistling softly through his teeth. Well, here goes. Hilary brushed past, against the paneling on the wall side. The servant was unaware. Hilary went more boldly down into the hall and took up a position near the door. He saw the advantages of not needing breakfast. Robbing the kitchen would have presented difficulties.

The day porter, a familiar face again, came obligingly and set the two swing-doors wide open to the morning air, kicking a wooden wedge under each. Hilary walked out onto the step and surveyed London. Just the same and ever changing. Good old London.

For several hours, tireless, invisible, feasting his sight, he roamed the streets and parks of the West End. He stood beside the Serpentine and watched the ducks being fed from paper bags, and the little old man beloved of the pigeons. He inspected minutely the state of the flower-beds, and watched dispassionately several broad-beamed young women bouncing healthfully along Rotten Row. If a woman could see herself, mounted, from behind, wearing breeches ...Oh, well, sidesaddle was bad for the unborn generation to come.

The morning passed, and it wasn’t so bad. Apparently one would get used to this sort of thing. He wondered how many more of his kind there were in the streets of London, and if they could see each other, and recognize a fellow drifter between the worlds. Everyone looked quite normal. Perhaps he was the only one who haunted London that day.

Every now and then he confronted the matter of George and Alice, with a growing curiosity. Of course as soon as they learned what had happened to him they would be free.... He wondered how they would take it, and knew that he meant to go and see. It wasn’t decent to watch and listen to them today, of course, except that they would never know. But through them he might find the key to this fantastic adventure of his.

Again and again the dim presentiment passed through him of something awaiting him somewhere which would explain everything. He had not finished yet. He was here for some purpose which was still formless and beyond his reach. He was here to find something, to learn something, to see or hear something which still eluded him. When he got to it he would know the reason for the extraordinary thing which was happening to him. By some freak of time and space he was permitted to seek his destiny even after death should have solved it. But as yet he lacked all guidance, awaiting some message which seemed not to come through.