Nobody who has not stood in some deadly peril of this sort can guess the relief we felt as we got back once again into fairly decent clothes, that did not make us appear much different to what we really were, and gave us the advantage of our own speech and looks. One takes up a disguise glibly enough, even if at first it presents an arduous strain to the nerves; but after a time the thing becomes a veritable Frankenstein to one, and seems to absorb every ounce of one's brain and strength. Casteno literally danced with joy as he flung his uniform into a corner as far as he could. "Thank goodness, now we can walk and talk like other folk," he cried. "For my own part, I don't care who we meet or what is said to us. I feel powerful enough to deny anything." "But surely," I gasped, "you don't mean to show yourself in public until night is fallen? Think--think of the risks!" "I have, and I mean to take them. Nobody in Worcester can identify us now with the two soldiers who took passages in the air-ship at Shrewsbury. Remember, even if Colonel Napier could be quite sure it was us who had played him such a scurvy trick, he dare not say so. In the first place, people will think the fall and the shock have given him softening of the brain if we stick up to him and deny him with all the lung violence we are capable of. Secondly, you forget he is Professor Stephen Leopardi, the expert of the Meteorological Office, to the world just at present. He is the fraud, not us, and we have only got to unmask him to the hunchback, or to get inquiries made about him in London, where the police want him for his mysterious disappearance from Whitehall Court, and where the Meteorological people would have him instantly arrested for his impersonation, to put him utterly to confusion. Hence we have no cause to fear him or anyone here. We are free--free as air." And again he capered about the ruins, overcome with glee. "Then you mean actually to walk off to the railway station with all the Worcester police on the alert and to take the next express up to town?" I questioned. "You think we shall escape without any trouble!" "Of course I do. Is it not race time, and is not the city full of strangers? Besides, you seem to have forgotten the most important thing of all. I have these manuscripts in my possession, and Camille Velasquon has brought the key to them all the way from Mexico. Now all we have got to do is to compare the two--and then?" He stopped and looked straight at me, as we stood with the ruins silhouetted against the old cathedral chapter-house. My gaze met his. "And then?" I repeated; and I stopped, and instinctively my hands clenched.