remain where I was, keeping a cautious
eye on the two or three sets of shopmen and customers who were
meandering through the place, until closing time came. Then I
should be able, I thought, to rob the place for food and clothing,
and disguised, prowl through it and examine its resources, perhaps
sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable plan.
My idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled but
acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books
and parcels where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and
elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the advantages my
invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my fellow-men.

"Closing time arrived quickly enough. It could not have been more
than an hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before I
noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being
marched doorward. And then a number of brisk young men began with
remarkable alacrity to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I
left my lair as the crowds diminished, and prowled cautiously out
into the less desolate parts of the shop. I was really surprised to
observe how rapidly the young men and women whipped away the goods
displayed for sale during the day. All the boxes of goods, the
hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the
grocery section, the displays of this and that, were being whipped
down, folded up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that
could not be taken down and put away had sheets of some coarse
stuff like sacking flung over them. Finally all the chairs were
turned up on to the counters, leaving the floor clear. Directly
each of these young people had done, he or she made promptly for
the door with such an expression of animation as I have rarely
observed in a shop assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters
scattering sawdust and carrying pails and brooms. I had to dodge
to get out of the way, and as it was, my ankle got stung with the
sawdust. For some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened
departments, I could hear the brooms at work. And at last a good
hour or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise of
locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I found myself
wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries, show-rooms
of the place, alone. It was very still; in one place I remember
passing near one of the Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening
to the t