'What names are we to take?' enquired the latter, anxiously adjusting
the window-glass spectacles which he had been suffered on this occasion
to assume.
'There's no choice for you, my boy,' returned Michael. 'Bent Pitman
or nothing. As for me, I think I look as if I might be called Appleby;
something agreeably old-world about Appleby--breathes of Devonshire
cider. Talking of which, suppose you wet your whistle? the interview is
likely to be trying.'
'I think I'll wait till afterwards,' returned Pitman; 'on the whole, I
think I'll wait till the thing's over. I don't know if it strikes you
as it does me; but the place seems deserted and silent, Mr Finsbury, and
filled with very singular echoes.'
'Kind of Jack-in-the-box feeling?' enquired Michael, 'as if all these
empty trains might be filled with policemen waiting for a signal? and
Sir Charles Warren perched among the girders with a silver whistle to
his lips? It's guilt, Pitman.'
In this uneasy frame of mind they walked nearly the whole length of
the departure platform, and at the western extremity became aware of a
slender figure standing back against a pillar.
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