It was neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at Phillida’s door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining all. Baumgartner would be out for hours; he always was, on these early jaunts of his; there would almost be time to wait and say goodbye properly when the girl came down. She would hardly hinder him a second time, and he longed to see her and speak to her again, especially if that was to be the end between them. He did not mean it to be the end, by any means; but any nonsense that might have been gathering in the schoolboy’s head was, at this point, more than rudely dispelled by the discovery that Dr. Baumgartner had removed his clothes! Pocket swore an oath that would have shocked him in a schoolfellow; it was a practice he indeed abhorred, but decent words would not meet such a case. It was to be met by action, however, just as that locked door had been met, and the policeman’s prohibition in the Park. He knew where his clothes must be. He slipped his overcoat, which he was using as a dressing-gown, over his pyjamas, and ran right downstairs as Dr. Baumgartner had done not many minutes before him. His clothes were in the dark-room. But the dark-room door had a Yale lock; there was no forcing it by foot or shoulder, though Pocket in his passion tried both. So round he went without a moment’s hesitation to the dark-room window by way of the little conservatory. The blind was drawn. That mattered nothing. He went back for a plant-pot, and smashed both it and a sheet of ruby glass with one vicious blow. Entry was simple after that; he had only to be careful not to cut his hands or feet. Inside, he removed the broken glass, closed the window, and let the blind down as he had found it, without looking twice at his clothes. There they were for him to carry upstairs at his leisure. They were not his only property in that room either. His revolver was there somewhere under lock and key. He might want it, waking, if Dr. Baumgartner came back before his time. It was easily located; of the lockers, built in with the shelves on the folding doors, only one was actually locked, and the revolver was not in the others. Pocket went to his waistcoat for one of those knives beloved of schoolboys, with the hook for extracting stones from hoofs, among other superfluous implements. Pocket had never used this one, had often felt inclined to wrench it off because it was hard to open and in the way of the other tools. But he used it now with as little hesitation as he had done the other damage, with almost a lust for breakage; and there was his revolver, safe and sound as his clothes.