The Uttermost Farthing

Laurence Vanderlyn, unpaid attaché at the American Embassy in Paris, strode down thelong grey platform marked No. 5, of the Gare de Lyon. It was seven o'clock, the hour atwhich Paris is dining or is about to dine, and the huge station was almost deserted. The train de luxe had gone more than an hour ago, the Riviera rapide would not start tillten, but one of those trains bound for the South, curiously named demi-rapides, was timedto leave in twenty minutes. Foreigners, especially Englishmen and Americans, avoid these trains, and this was whyLaurence Vanderlyn had chosen it as the starting point of what was to be a great adventure, an adventure which must for ever be concealed, obliterated as much as may be from hisown memory-do not men babble in delirium?-once life had again become the rathergrey thing he had found it to be.