about midday
One wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time , and what plans he devised . No doubt he was almost ecstatically exasperated by Kemp 's treachery , and though we may be able to understand the motives that led to that deceit , we may still imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted surprise must have occasioned . Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him , for he had evidently counted on Kemp 's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world . At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday , and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two . It was a fortunate thing , perhaps , for humanity , but for him it was a fatal inaction . During that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside were busy . In the morning he had still been simply a legend , a terror ; in the afternoon , by virtue chiefly of Kemp 's drily worded proclamation , he was presented as a tangible antagonist , to be wounded , captured , or overcome , and the countryside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity .