At this there was a shout of laughter, the inspector slammed the door, the guard whistled, and the next moment the train was off.
As soon as the train was well out of the station Hamar repeated the words he had used, backwards, and he was once again visible.
The effect of his reappearance amongst them was even more striking than that of his previous disappearance.
"Take it away--take it away!" the lady opposite him shouted, throwing up her hands to ward him off. "It's there again! Take it away! I shall die--I shall go mad!"
"How hideous! How diabolical!" a stout, elderly man said in slow, measured tones, as if he were reading his own funeral service. "It must be the devil! The devil! Ha!" and burying his face in his hands, he indulged in a loud fit of mirthless laughter.
"Why don't you do something? Talk theology to it, exorcise it," a remarkably plain woman, in the far corner of the carriage said, in highly indignant tones to the clergyman. "As usual, whenever there is something to be done, it is woman who must do it!"
She got up, and casting a look of infinite scorn at the clergyman--whose condition of terror prevented him uttering even the one telling, biting word--Suffragette--that had risen and stuck in his throat--raised her umbrella, and, before Hamar could stop her, struck it vigorously at him.
"Ghost, demon, devil!" she cried. "I know no fear! Begone!" And the point of her umbrella coming in violent contact with Hamar's waistcoat, all the breath was unceremoniously knocked out of him; and with a ghastly groan he rolled off his seat on to the floor, where he writhed and grovelled in the most dreadful agony, whilst his assailant continued to stab and jab at him.
In all probability, she would have succeeded, eventually, in reaching some vital part of his body, had not one of the frenzied passengers pulled the communication-cord and stopped the train!
With the advent of the guard, Hamar's assailant was dragged off him, and he was locked up in a separate compartment, "to be given in charge," so the indignant official announced, directly they got to Brighton. But Hamar ordained it otherwise. As soon as he had sufficiently recovered from the effects of the severe castigation the female furioso had inflicted on him, he became invisible, and when the train drew up at the Brighton platform, and a couple of policemen arrived to march him on, he was nowhere to be found! This was his first experiment with the newly acquired property. "In future," he said to himself, "before I try any tricks, I'll take very good care there are no Suffragettes about."