It is the unwritten law among travellers that a man's luggage
deposited upon a seat, shall secure that seat to him until he comes
to sit upon it himself. This is a good law and a just law, and one
that, in my normal state, I myself would die to uphold and maintain.
But at three o'clock on a chilly morning one's moral sensibilities
are not properly developed. The average man's conscience does not
begin work till eight or nine o'clock - not till after breakfast, in
fact. At three a.m. he will do things that at three in the
afternoon his soul would revolt at.
Under ordinary circumstances I should as soon have thought of
shifting a man's bag and appropriating his seat as an ancient Hebrew
squatter would have thought of removing his neighbour's landmark;
but at this time in the morning my better nature was asleep.
I have often read of a man's better nature being suddenly awakened.
The business is generally accomplished by an organ-grinder or a
little child (I would back the latter, at all events - give it a fair
chance - to awaken anything in this world that was not stone deaf, or
that had not been dead for more than twenty-four hours); and if an
organ-grinder or a little child had been around Ostend station that
morning, things might have been different.
B. and I might have been saved from crime. Just as we were in the
middle of our villainy, the organ-grinder or the child would have
struck up, and we should have burst into tears, and have rushed from
the carriage, and have fallen upon each other's necks outside on the
platform, and have wept, and waited for the next train.
As it was, after looking carefully round to see that nobody was
watching us, we slipped quickly into the carriage, and, making room
for ourselves among the luggage there, sat down and tried to look
innocent and easy.
B. said that the best thing we could do, when the other people came,
would be to pretend to be dead asleep, and too stupid to understand
anything.
I replied that as far as I was concerned, I thought I could convey
the desired impression without stooping to deceit at all, and
prepared to make myself comfortable.
A few seconds later another man got into the carriage. He also made
room for himself among the luggage and sat down.
"I am afraid that seat's taken, sir," said B. when he had recovered
his surprise at the man's coolness. "In fact, all the seats in this
carriage are taken."
"I can't help that," replied the ruffian, cynically. "I've got to
get to Cologne some time to-day, and there seems no other way of
doing it that I can see."
"Yes, but so has the gentleman whose seat you have taken got to get
there," I remonstrated; "what about him?
