I could not find any money, and it was only when the waiting crowd
behind me, which had mounted to hundreds, was becoming offensively
hostile that I succeeded in producing a five-pound note.

The booking-clerk took her own time to count out the change, and on
leaving the window I found four policemen struggling to keep back an
infuriated mob of people, all shrieking imprecations and asking for my
blood.

There was but one thing for it--to get to a train before this angry
horde could secure its tickets; so I made a wild dash for the
moving-staircase, shedding Bradburys _en route_ like a paper-chase.

As I rushed past the ticket-puncher she made a vicious lunge at my
out-stretched hand with an enormous pair of pincers, missing the ticket
and partially amputating my thumb.

As I have always expected to do, but have never yet done, I missed
my footing at the top of the escalator, and my desire to outstrip my
enemies was realised beyond my wildest hopes as I crashed, by a series
of petrifying somersaults, down the entire flight, to be belched forth
like a sausage from a machine at the bottom.

Tattered, torn and in unspeakable agony I picked myself up and found my
steering-gear so damaged that I could only move sideways, crab-fashion,
and in this manner I crawled on to the platform just as a train was
beginning its exit.

I make a leap for it. The gates crash to! Am I inside them or out?
Neither. I am pinned there with the first half of my body struggling