第 15 页

sister, she blundered needlessly into him he thought, caught hold of him

and laughed. But a word of vague remonstrance sent her into the unseen

again.

The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking

excitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not the

Council!" "They are saying so in the Ways." The passage seemed wider.

Suddenly the wall fell away. He was in a great space and people were

stirring remotely. He inquired his way of an indistinct figure. "Strike

straight across," said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and in

a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of

glass. Graham's eyes, now attuned to darkness, made out a long vista

with pallid tables on either side. He went down this. At one or two of

the tables he heard a clang of glass and a sound of eating. There were

people then cool enough to dine, or daring enough to steal a meal

in spite of social convulsion and darkness. Far off and high up he

presently saw a pallid light of a semi-circular shape. As he approached

this, a black edge came up and hid it. He stumbled at steps and found

himself in a gallery. He heard a sobbing, and found two scared little

girls crouched by a railing. These children became silent at the near

sound of feet. He tried to console them, but they were very still until

he left them. Then as he receded he could hear them sobbing again.

Presently he found himself at the foot of a staircase and near a wide

opening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of the

blackness into a street of moving Ways again. Along this a disorderly

swarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the song

of the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flared

creating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twice

puzzled by that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answer

he could understand. He was two miles from the wind-vane offices in

Westminster, but the way was easy to follow.

When at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices it

seemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching along

the Ways, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restoration

of the lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the Council must

already be accomplished. And still no news of his absence came to his

ears.

The re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenly

he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was

incandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of the

excited crowds that choked the Ways near the wind-vane offices, and the

sense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourless

intention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety.

For a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse and

weary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in his

cause. The frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by some

moving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spite

of his strenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented his

approaching it. From the fragments of speech he caught, he judged it

conveyed news of the fighting about the Council House. Ignorance and

indecision made him slow and ineffective in his movements. For a time he

could not conceive how he was to get within the unbroken facade of this

place. He made his way slowly into the midst of this mass of people,

until he realised that the descending staircase of the central Way led

to the interior of the buildings. This gave him a goal, but the crowding

in the central path was so dense that it was long before he could reach

it. And even then he encountered intricate obstruction, and had an hour

of vivid argument first in this guard room and then in that before he

could get a note taken to the one man of all men who was most eager

to see him. His story was laughed to scorn at one place, and wiser for

that, when at last he reached a second stairway he professed simply to

have news of extraordinary importance for Ostrog. What it was he would

not say. They sent his note reluctantly. For a long time he waited in

a little room at the foot of the lift shaft, and thither at last came

Lincoln, eager, apologetic, astonished. He stopped in the doorway

scrutinising Graham, then rushed forward effusively.

"Yes," he cried. "It is you. And you are not dead!"

Graham made a brief explanation.

"My brother is waiting," explained Lincoln. "He is alone in the

wind-vane offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He

doubted--and things are very urgent still in spite of what we are

telling them _there_--or he would have come to you."

They ascended a lift, passed along a narrow passage, crossed a

great hall, empty save for two hurrying messengers, and entered a

comparatively little room, whose only furniture was a long settee and a

large oval disc of cloudy, shifting grey, hung by cables from the wall.

There Lincoln left Graham for a space, and he remained alone without

understanding the shifting smoky shapes that drove slowly across this

disc.

His attention was arrested by a sound that began abruptly. It was

cheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, a

roaring exultation. This ended as sharply as it had begun, like a sound

heard between the opening and shutting of a door. In the outer room was

a noise of hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chain

was running over the teeth of a wheel.

Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "It

is Ostrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then

everything was still again.

Presently came voices, footsteps and movement without. The footsteps

of some one person detached itself from the other sounds and drew

near, firm, evenly measured steps. The curtain lifted slowly. A tall,

white-haired man, clad in garments of cream coloured silk, appeared,

regarding Graham from under his raised arm.

For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped

it and stood before it. Graham's first impression was of a very broad

forehead, very pale blue eyes deep sunken under white brows, an aquiline

nose, and a heavily-lined resolute mouth. The folds of flesh over the

eyes, the drooping of the corners of the mouth contradicted the

upright bearing, and said the man was old. Graham rose to his feet

instinctively, and for a moment the two men stood in silence, regarding

each other.

"You are Ostrog?" said Graham.

"I am Ostrog."

"The Boss?"

"So I am called."

Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "I have to thank you

chiefly, I understand, for my safety," he said presently.

"We were afraid you were killed," said Ostrog.

"Or sent to sleep again--for ever. We have been doing everything to keep

our secret--the secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How

did you get here?"

Graham told him briefly.

Ostrog listened in silence.

He smiled faintly. "Do you know what I was doing when they came to tell

me you had come?"

"How can I guess?"

"Preparing your double."

"My double?"

"A man as like you as we could find. We were going to hypnotise him, to

save him the difficulty of acting. It was imperative. The whole of this

revolt depends on the idea that you are awake, alive, and with us. Even

now a great multitude of people has gathered in the theatre clamouring

to see you. They do not trust... You know, of course--something of your

position?"

"Very little," said Graham.

"It is like this." Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned.

"You are absolute owner," he said, "of more than half the world. As a

result of that you are practically King. Your powers are limited in

many intricate ways, but you are the figure head, the popular symbol of

government. This White Council, the Council of Trustees as it is called."

"I have heard the vague outline of these things."

"I wondered."

"I came upon a garrulous old man."

"I see... Our masses--the word comes from your days--you know of course,

that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. Just as a

great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler.

They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the rule

of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old

quarrel of the common man with his commonness--the misery of work and

discipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certain

matters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example,

they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already we

of the popular party were agitating for reforms--when your waking came.

Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunity."

He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance for your years of

quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealing

to you, and--Flash!"

He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to

show that he understood.

"The Council muddled--quarreled. They always do. They could not decide

what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"

"I see. I see. And now--we win?"

"We win. Indeed we win. Tonight, in five swift hours. Suddenly we struck

everywhere. The windvane people, the Labour Company and its millions,

burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeropiles."

He paused. "Yes," said Graham, guessing that aeropile meant flying

machine.

"That was, of course, essential. Or they could have got away. All the

city rose, every third man almost was in it! All the blue, all the

public services, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the red

police. You were rescued, and their own police of the Ways--not half of

them could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmed

or killed. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.

"Half of those who remain to them of the red police were lost in that

foolish attempt to recapture you. They lost their heads when they lost

you. They flung all they had at the theatre. We cut them off from

the Council House there. Truly tonight has been a night of victory.

Everywhere your star has blazed. A day ago--the White Council ruled as

it has ruled for a gross of years, for a century and a half of years,

and then, with only a little whispering, a covert arming here and there,

suddenly--So!"

"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--. I do not clearly

understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where

is the Council? Where is the fight?"

Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly,

save for an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was

puzzled.

Then he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, had

assumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strange

unfamiliar scene.

At the first glance he was unable to guess what this scene might be.

It was a daylight scene, the daylight of a wintry day, grey and clear.

Across the picture and halfway as it seemed between him and the remoter

view, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. Then he

perceived that the rows of great windwheels he saw, the wide intervals,

the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which he

had fled from the Council House. He distinguished an orderly file of red

figures marching across an open space between files of men in black,

and realised before Ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the upper

surface of latter-day London. The overnight snows had gone. He judged

that this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, but

that matter was not explained to him. He saw that though the file of red

figures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out of

the picture to the left. He wondered momentarily, and then saw that the

picture was passing slowly, panorama fashion, across the oval.

"In a moment you will see the fighting," said Ostrog at his elbow.

"Those fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space

of London--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets

and public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time have

disappeared."

Something out of focus obliterated half the picture. Its form suggested

a man. There was a gleam of metal, a flash, something that swept across

the oval, as the eyelid of a bird sweeps across its eye, and the picture

was clear again. And now Graham beheld men running down among the

wind-wheels, pointing weapons from which jetted out little

smoky flashes. They swarmed thicker and thicker to the right,

gesticulating--it might be they were shouting, but of that the picture

told nothing. They and the windwheels passed slowly and steadily across

the field of the mirror.

"Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edge

crept into view and gathered Graham's attention. Soon it was no longer

an edge but a cavity, a huge blackened space amidst the clustering

edifices, and from it thin spires of smoke rose into the pallid winter

sky. Gaunt ruinous masses of the building, mighty truncated piers and

girders, rose dismally out of this cavernous darkness. And over these

vestiges of some splendid place, countless minute men were clambering,

leaping, swarming.

"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. And

the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up

the buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash?

It shattered half the brittle glass in the city."

And while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this sea of ruins,

overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white