eight o'clock
Thus laden I adjourned to the station buffet . There I set about executing a scheme I had evolved for leaving the document which Semlin had brought from England in a place of safety , whence it could be recovered without difficulty , should anything happen to me . I knew no one in Holland save Dicky , and I could not send him the document , for I did not trust the post . For the same reason I would not post the document home to my bank in England : besides , I knew one could not register letters until eight o'clock , by which hour I hoped to be well on my way into Germany . No , my bag , conveniently weighted with books and deposited at the station cloak-room , should be my safe . The comparative security of station cloak-rooms as safe deposits has long been recognized by jewel thieves and the like and this means of leaving my document behind in safety seemed to me to be better than any other I could think of . So I dived into my bag and from the piles of literature it contained picked up a book at random .