irritably. Inside Charing Cross Station business was proceeding as
usual. Porters wheeling baggage-trucks moved to and fro like
Juggernauts. Belated trains clanked in, glad to get home, while
others, less fortunate, crept reluctantly out through the blackness
and disappeared into an inferno of detonating fog-signals. For
outside the fog still held. The air was cold and raw and tasted
coppery. In the street traffic moved at a funeral pace, to the
accompaniment of hoarse cries and occasional crashes. Once the sun
had worked its way through the murk and had hung in the sky like a
great red orange, but now all was darkness and discomfort again,
blended with that odd suggestion of mystery and romance which is a
London fog's only redeeming quality.

It seemed to Derek that he had been patrolling the platform for a
life-time, but he resumed his sentinel duty. The fact that the
boat-train, being already forty-five minutes overdue, might arrive at
any moment made it imperative that he remain where he was instead of
sitting, as he would much have preferred to sit, in one of the
waiting-rooms. It would be a disaster if his mother should get out of
the train and not find him there to meet her. That was just the sort
of thing which would infuriate her; and her mood, after a Channel
crossing and a dreary journey by rail, would be sufficiently
dangerous as it was.

The fog and the waiting had had their effect upon Derek. The resolute
front he had exhibited to Freddie at the breakfast-table had melted
since his arrival at the station, and he was feeling nervous at the
prospect of the meeting that lay before him. Calm as he had appeared
to the eye of Freddie and bravely as he had spoken, Derek, in the
recesses of his heart, was afraid of his mother. There are men--and