The return trip, against the blast of the wind, was much slower. And he was further burdened by the parcel of Agar’s clothing, which he clutched to his chest, leaving only one hand free to grip the roofing as he crawled forward along the length of the train. His progress was agonizingly slow. Within minutes he realized that he was going to miss his intended schedule, and badly. He would still be crawling along the rooftops when the train reached Ashford Station; and then he would be spotted, and the jig would be up.
Pierce had a moment of profound rage that this final step in the plan should be, in the end, the only thing to go irretrievably wrong. The fact that the error was entirely his own doing merely increased his fury. He gripped the pitching, swaying carnage roof and swore into the wind, but the blast of air was so loud he did not hear his own voice.
He knew, of course, what he must do, but he did not think about it. He continued forward as best he could. He was midway along the fourth of the seven second-class carriages when he felt the train begin to slow beneath him. The whistle screamed.
Squinting ahead, he saw Ashford Station, a tiny red rectangle with a gray roof in the far distance. He could not make out any details, but he knew that in less than a minute the train would be near enough that passengers on the platform could see him on the roof. For a brief moment, he wondered what they would think if they did see him, and then he got up and ran, sprinting forward, leaping from one car to the next without hesitation, half blinded by the smoke that poured from the engine funnel back toward him.
Somehow he made it safely to the first-class coach, swung down, opened the door, dropped into his compartment, and immediately pulled the blinds. The train was now chugging very slowly, and as Pierce collapsed into his seat he heard the hiss of the brakes and the porter’s cry: “Ashford Station… Ashford… Ashford…”
Pierce sighed.
They had done it.
Chapter 45
The End of the Line
Twenty-seven minutes later, the train arrived at Folkestone, the end of the South Eastern Railway line, and all the passengers disembarked. Pierce emerged from his compartment, appearing, he said, “far better than I deserved, but far from sartorial correctness, to put it lightly.”
Although he had hastily employed handkerchief and spittle to clean his face and hands, he had discovered the soot and grime on his flesh to be most recalcitrant. As he had no mirror, he could only guess at the condition of his face, but his hands were no cleaner than a kind of pale gray. Furthermore, he suspected that his sandy-colored hair was now a good deal darker than previously, and he was grateful that most of it would be covered by his top hat.
But except for the top hat, all his clothing fitted poorly. Even in an age when most people’s clothing fitted poorly, Pierce felt himself especially noticeable. The trousers were almost two inches short of an acceptable length, and the cut of the coat, although elegant enough, was of the extreme and showy fashion that true gentlemen of breeding avoided as indecently nouveau riche. And, of course, he reeked of dead cat.
Thus Pierce stepped out onto the crowded Folkestone platform with an inner dread. He knew that most observers would put down his appearance as a sham: it was common enough for men who aspired to be gentlemen to obtain secondhand goods, which they wore proudly, oblivious to the ill fit of the garments. But Pierce was all too aware that Henry Fowler, whose entire conscious being was attuned to the nuances of social standing, would spot the peculiarity of Pierce’s appearance in an instant, and would wonder what was amiss. He would almost certainly realize that Pierce had changed clothing for some reason during the ride, and he would wonder about that as well.
Pierce’s only hope lay in keeping his distance from Fowler. He planned, if he could, to make off with a distant wave of goodbye, and an air of pressing business that precluded social amenities. Fowler would certainly understand a man who looked after business first. And , from a distance, with the intervening throng of people, Pierce’s bizarre dress might possibly escape his eye.