ter, there
was  now  one sensational difference  which they could see  clearly upon the
slope of the hill, as if  upon a slanted map. The bulk of the riders were in
one block;  but  one rider flew  far  ahead of the column, and with  frantic
movements  of hand  and heel urged his horse faster and faster,  so that one
might have fancied that he was not the pursuer but the pursued. But  even at
that great distance they could see something so fanatical, so unquestionable
in  his figure,  that they knew it was the Secretary himself. "I am sorry to
cut  short a cultured discussion,"  said  the  Colonel, "but can you lend me
your motor-car now, in two minutes?"
     "I  have a  suspicion that  you are all mad," said Dr.  Renard, smiling
sociably;  "but  God  forbid  that  madness  should  in  any  way  interrupt
friendship. Let us go round to the garage."
     Dr. Renard was a mild  man  with monstrous wealth; his  rooms were like
the Musee de  Cluny, and he had three  motor-cars. These, however, he seemed
to use very sparingly, having the simple tastes of  the French middle class,
and when his impatient friends came to examine them, it took them  some time
to assure themselves that one of them even could be made  to work. This with
some  difficulty  they  brought  round into the  street before  the Doctor's
house.  When they came out of the dim garage they were startled to find that
twilight  had  already fallen with the abruptness  of  night in the tropics.
Either they had been longer in the place than they imagined, or some unusual
canopy  of  cloud  had  gathered  over the town. They looked down  the steep
streets, and seemed to see a slight mist coming up from the sea.
     "It is now or never," said Dr. Bull. "I hear horses."
     "No," corrected the Professor, "a horse."
     And as they listened,  it was evident  that the  noise,  rapidly coming
nearer on the rattling stones, was not the noise  of the whole cavalcade but
that of the one horseman, who had left it far behind-- the insane Secretary.
     Syme's  family, like most of those who end in the simple life, had once
owned  a  motor, and  he knew all about  them. He had leapt at once into the
chauffeur's  seat, and with  flushed  face was  wrenching and tugging at the
disused machinery. He bent his strength upon one handle, and then said quite
quietly--
     "I am afraid it's no go."
     As he  spoke, there  swept round  the corner a man rigid on his rushing
horse, with  the rush and rigidity of an arrow. He  had a  smile that thrust
out his chin as if it were  dislocated. He swept alongside of the stationary
car, into which its company had crowded, and laid his  hand on the front. It
was the Secretary,  and his mouth  went quite  straight  in the solemnity of
triumph.
     Syme was leaning hard upon the steering wheel,  and  there was no sound
but  the rumble of the other pursuers  riding into the town. Then there came
quite  suddenly a scream of  scraping iron,  and the  car leapt forward.  It
plucked  the Secretary clean out of his saddle, as a knife is whipped out of
its sheath, trailed him  kicking terribly for twenty  yards,  and  left  him
flung flat upon the  road far  in front of his  frightened horse. As the car
took the corner of the street with a splendid curve, they could just see the
other anarchists filling the street and raising their fallen leader.
     "I  can't  understand why it has grown so dark,"  said the Professor at
last in a low voice.
     "Going to  be a storm, I think," said Dr. Bull.  "I say, it's a pity we
haven't got a light on this car, if only to see by."
     "We have," said the Colonel, and from the floor of the car he fished up
a heavy, old-fashioned, carved iron lantern with a  light inside it. It  was
obviously an  antique, and it would seem as if its original use had  been in
some way semi-religious, for there  was a rude moulding of  a cross upon one
of its sides.
     "Where on earth did you get that?" asked the Professor.
     "I got it where I got the car," answered the Colonel, chuckling,  "from
my best friend. While our friend here was  fighting with the steering wheel,
I ran  up the front steps of the house and spoke to Renard, who was standing
in his own porch, you will remember. 'I suppose,'  I said, 'there's no  time
to  get a lamp.'  He  looked up,  blinking amiably  at the beautiful  arched
ceiling  of his  own front  hall. From  this  was  suspended,  by  chains of
exquisite  ironwork,  this  lantern, one  of the  hundred  treasures of  his
treasure house. By sheer force he tore  the  lamp  out  of  his own ceiling,
shattering  the painted  panels, and bringing down two blue  vases with  his
violence. Then he handed me the iron lantern, and I put it in the car. Was I
not right when I said that Dr. Renard was worth knowing?"
     "You  were," said Syme seriously,  and hung the  heavy lantern over the
front. There was a certain allegory of their  whole position in the contrast
between  the modern automobile and its strange ecclesiastical lamp. Hitherto
they had passed through the quietest  part of the town, meeting  at most one
or  two  pedestrians,  who could  give  them no  hint of  the  peace  or the
hostility of the place. Now, however, the windows in the houses began one by
one to  be lit up, giving  a greater  sense of habitation and humanity.  Dr.
Bull turned  to the new detective  who had led their  flight,  and permitted
himself one of his natural and friendly smiles.
     "These lights make one feel more cheerful."
     Inspector Ratcliffe drew his brows together.
     "There is only  one set of lights that make me more cheerful," he said,
"and they are those lights of the  police station which I can see beyond the
town. Please God we may be there in ten minutes."
     Then all  Bull's boiling good sense and optimism broke  suddenly out of
him.
     "Oh, this is all raving nonsense!" he cried. "If  you really think that
ordinary people  in ordinary houses are anarchists, you must  be madder than
an anarchist yourself. If we turned and fought these fellows, the whole town
would fight for us."
     "No,"  said the  other with an immovable  simplicity,  "the  whole town
would fight for them. We shall see.'
     While they were  speaking the Professor  had  leant forward with sudden
excitement.
     "What is that noise?" he said.
     "Oh, the horses behind us, I suppose," said the Colonel. "I thought  we
had got clear of them."
     "The horses behind us!  No," said the Professor, "it is not horses, and
it is not behind us."
     Almost as he  spoke, across  the  end  of  the  street before  them two
shining and rattling shapes shot past. They were gone almost in a flash, but
everyone  could  see that they were motor-cars, and  the Professor stood  up
with a pale face and swore that they were the  other two motor-cars from Dr.
Renard's garage.
     "I tell you they were his," he repeated, with wild eyes, "and they were
full of men in masks!"
     "Absurd!" said the Colonel angrily.  "Dr.  Renard would never give them
his cars."
     "He  may have been forced," said Ratcliffe quietly.  "The whole town is
on their side."
     "You still believe that," asked the Colonel incredulously.
     "You will all believe it soon," said the other with a hopeless calm.
     There was a puzzled pause for some  little time,  and then the  Colonel
began again abruptly--
     "No, I can't believe it.  The thing is nonsense. The plain people of  a
peaceable French town--"
     He was cut short by a bang and a blaze of  light, which seemed close to
his eyes. As the  car sped on it left a floating patch of white smoke behind
it, and Syme had heard a shot shriek past his ear.
     "My God!" said the Colonel, "someone has shot at us."
     "It need not interrupt conversation," said the gloomy Ratcliffe.  "Pray
resume your  remarks, Colonel.  You were talking,  I think, about the  plain
people of a peaceable French town."
     The staring Colonel was long  past minding satire. He  rolled his  eyes
all round the street.
     "It is extraordinary," he said, "most extraordinary."
     "A  fastidious person,"  said Syme,  "might  even  call it  unpleasant.
However, I suppose those lights out in the field beyond this street are  the
Gendarmerie. We shall soon get there."
     "No," said Inspector Ratcliffe, "we shall never get there."
     He had been  standing  up  and looking keenly ahead  of him. Now he sat
down and smoothed his sleek hair with a weary gesture.
     "What do you mean?" asked Bull sharply.
     "I  mean that  we shall never get  there," said the pessimist placidly.
"They  have  two rows of armed  men across the road already; I  can see them
from here. The town is in arms, as I said it was.
     I can only wallow in the exquisite comfort of my own exactitude."
     And  Ratcliffe sat down comfortably in the car and lit a cigarette, but
the others rose excitedly and stared down the road. Syme had slowed down the
car  as  their plans  became  doubtful,  and  he  brought  it finally  to  a
standstill just at the corner of a side street that ran down very steeply to
the sea.
     The town was mostly in shadow, but the sun  had not sunk;  wherever its
level light could break through,  it  painted everything  a burning gold. Up
this side street  the last sunset light  shone as sharp  and  narrow as  the
shaft of artificial light at  the  theatre. It struck  the car  of the  five
friends,  and lit it like a burning chariot.  But the  rest  of  the street,
especially the two ends  of it, was  in the  deepest twilight, and for  some
seconds  they could  see nothing. Then  Syme, whose eyes  were  the keenest,
broke into a little bitter whistle, and said
     "It  is quite true.  There is a crowd  or an army  or some  such  thing
across the end of that street."
     "Well,  if there  is,"  said Bull impatiently,  "it must  be  something
else--a sham  fight or the mayor's birthday or something. I cannot  and will
not believe that plain, jolly  people in  a place like  this walk about with
dynamite in their pockets. Get on a bit, Syme, and let us look at them."
     The  car crawled about a hundred yards farther, and then they were  all
startled by Dr. Bull breaking into a high crow of laughter.
     "Why, you silly mugs!" he cried, "what did I tell you. That  crowd's as
law-abiding as a cow, and if it weren't, it's on our side."
     "How do you know?" asked the professor, staring.
     "You blind bat," cried Bull, "don't you see who is leading them?"
     They peered again,  and then the  Colonel, with  a catch in his  voice,
cried out--
     "Why, it's Renard!"
     There was, indeed, a rank of dim figures running across  the road,  and
they  could  not  be  clearly  seen; but  far enough  in  front to catch the
accident of the  evening light was stalking up and down the unmistakable Dr.
Renard,  in  a  white hat,  stroking  his long  brown  beard, and  holding a
revolver in his left hand.
     "What a fool I've been! " exclaimed  the Colonel. "Of course, the  dear
old boy has turned out to help us."
     Dr. Bull  was bubbling over  with laughter, swinging  the sword  in his
hand as carelessly  as a cane. He jumped out of the car and  ran  across the
intervening space, calling out--
     "Dr. Renard! Dr. Renard!"
     An instant after Syme thought  his own  eyes had gone mad in  his head.
For the  philanthropic  Dr. Renard had deliberately raised  his revolver and
fired twice at Bull, so that the shots rang down the road.
     Almost at the same second as the puff of white cloud went up  from this
atrocious explosion a  long  puff of  white  cloud  went  up also  from  the
cigarette of the cynical Ratcliffe. Like  all  the rest he  turned a  little
pale,  but he  smiled.  Dr. Bull, at  whom the bullets had been  fired, just
missing his  scalp, stood quite still in  the middle  of the road without  a
sign of fear, and then turned very slowly  and crawled back to the car,  and
climbed in with two holes through his hat.
     "Well," said the cigarette smoker slowly, "what do you think now?"
     "I think," said Dr. Bull with precision, "that I am lying in bed at No.
217 Peabody Buildings, and that I shall soon  wake up  with a jump;  or,  if
that's  not it,  I think  that I  am sitting  in a small  cushioned cell  in
Hanwell,  and that the doctor can't make much of my case. But if you want to
know  what I don't  think, I'll  tell you. I don't think what  you  think. I
don't think,  and I never shall think,  that the  mass of ordinary men are a
pack of dirty  modern  thinkers. No, sir, I'm a democrat, and I  still don't
believe that Sunday could convert one average navvy or counter-jumper. No, I
may be mad, but humanity isn't."
     Syme turned his  bright  blue eyes on Bull with an earnestness which he
did not commonly make clear.
     "You are a very fine  fellow,"  he said. "You can believe  in  a sanity
which is not  merely  your  sanity.  And you're right enough about humanity,
about peasants and people like  that jolly old  innkeeper.  But  you're  not
right about Renard. I suspected him from the first. He's rationalistic, and,
what's worse,  he's  rich. When duty and  religion are really destroyed,  it
will be by the rich."
     "They  are  really  destroyed now,"  said the man with a cigarette, and
rose with his hands in his pockets. "The devils are coming on!"
     The  men  in  the motor-car  looked  anxiously in the direction  of his
dreamy gaze, and they saw that the whole regiment at the end of the road was
advancing upon  them,  Dr. Renard marching  furiously  in front,  his  beard
flying in the breeze.
     The Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation.
     "Gentlemen," he cried, "the thing is incredible. It must be a practical
joke. If you  knew  Renard  as I  do--  it's like calling  Queen  Victoria a
dynamiter. If you had got the man's character into your head--"
     "Dr. Bull," said Syme sardonically, "has at least got it into his hat."
     "I tell you it can't be!" cried the Colonel, stamping.
     "Renard  shall  explain it.  He shall explain it to me," and  he strode
forward.
     "Don't be  in  such a hurry," drawled the smoker.  "He  will very  soon
explain it to all of us."
     But the impatient Colonel was already out of earshot, advancing towards
the advancing enemy. The excited  Dr.  Renard  lifted  his pistol again, but
perceiving his opponent,  hesitated, and  the Colonel came face to face with
him with frantic gestures of remonstrance.
     "It is no good," said Syme. "He will never get anything out of that old
heathen. I vote we drive bang through the thick of them, bang as the bullets
went  through  Bull's hat.  We may all be killed,  but  we must  kill a tidy
number of them."
     "I won't 'ave it,"  said Dr. Bull, growing more vulgar in the sincerity
of his  virtue. "The poor chaps may be making a  mistake. Give the Colonel a
chance."
     "Shall we go back, then?" asked the Professor.
     "No," said  Ratcliffe in  a cold voice, "the  street behind  us is held
too. In fact, I seem to see there another friend of yours, Syme."
     Syme spun round smartly, and  stared backwards at the track which  they
had  travelled. He saw an irregular body of horsemen gathering and galloping
towards them in the gloom. He saw above the foremost saddle the silver gleam
of  a sword, and  then as it grew nearer the  silver  gleam of an old  man's
hair.  The  next moment, with shattering violence,  he had  swung  the motor
round and sent it dashing down the  steep side street to the sea, like a man
that desired only to die.
     "What the devil is up?" cried the Professor, seizing his arm.
     "The morning star has fallen!" said Syme, as his own car  went down the
darkness like a falling star.
     The  others did not understand his words, but when they looked back  at
the  street  above they saw  the hostile cavalry coming round the corner and
down the slopes after  them;  and foremost of all rode the  good  innkeeper,
flushed with the fiery innocence of the evening light.
     "The world is insane!" said  the Professor, and buried his face in  his
hands.
     "No," said Dr. Bull in adamantine humility, "it is I."
     "What are we going to do?" asked the Professor.
     "At this moment," said Syme,  with a scientific detachment, "I think we
are going to smash into a lamppost."
     The  next instant  the  automobile  had  come  with a catastrophic  jar
against an iron object. The instant after that four men had crawled out from
under a chaos of metal, and a tall lean lamp-post that had stood up straight
on the  edge of  the  marine parade stood out, bent and  twisted,  like  the
branch of a broken tree.
     "Well, we  smashed something," said the  Professor, with a faint smile.
"That's some comfort."
     "You're becoming an anarchist," said Syme, dusting his clothes with his
instinct of daintiness.
     "Everyone is," said Ratcliffe.
     As  they  spoke,  the  white-haired  horseman and  his  followers  came
thundering from above, and almost at the same  moment  a dark string of  men
ran shouting along  the sea-front. Syme snatched a sword, and took it in his
teeth;  he stuck  two  others under  his arm-pits, took a fourth in his left
hand and the lantern in his right, and leapt off the high  parade on  to the
beach below.
     The others leapt after  him, with a common acceptance  of such decisive
action, leaving the debris and the gathering mob above them.
     "We have one  more  chance,"  said  Syme, taking the  steel out of  his
mouth. "Whatever  all this  pandemonium  means, I suppose the police station
will help us. We can't get there, for they hold  the way. But there's a pier
or  breakwater runs out into the sea just here, which we could defend longer
than anything else, like Horatius and his bridge. We must defend it till the
Gendarmerie turn out. Keep after me."
     They followed him as he went crunching  down the beach, and in a second
or  two their boots broke not  on the sea gravel, but on broad, flat stones.
They  marched down a long, low  jetty, running  out in one arm into the dim,
boiling  sea, and when they  came to the  end of it they felt that they  had
come to the end of their story. They turned and faced the town.
     That town was transfigured  with uproar. All along the high parade from
which they had just descended  was  a dark and roaring  stream  of humanity,
with  tossing  arms  and fiery  faces, groping and glaring towards them. The
long dark line was dotted with torches and lanterns; but even where no flame
lit up a  furious face,  they could see in the farthest figure, in the  most
shadowy gesture, an organised hate. It was clear that they were the accursed
of all men, and they knew not why.
     Two or three men, looking little and black like monkeys, leapt over the
edge as they had done and dropped on to the beach. These came ploughing down
the deep sand, shouting horribly, and strove to wade into the sea at random.
The example was followed, and  the whole black mass  of men began to run and
drip over the edge like black treacle.
     Foremost among the men on the beach Syme saw the peasant who had driven
their cart. He splashed into  the surf  on a  huge cart-horse, and shook his
axe at them.
     "The peasant!" cried Syme. "They have not risen since the Middle Ages."
     "Even if the police  do come now," said the Professor mournfully, "they
can do nothing with this mob."
     "Nonsence!" said Bull desperately; "there must be  some people left  in
the town who are human."
     "No,"  said  the  hopeless  Inspector,  "the  human being  will soon be
extinct. We are the last of mankind."
     "It may  be," said the Professor absently. Then he added in  his dreamy
voice, "What is all that at the end of the 'Dunciad'?

     Nor public flame; nor private, dares to shine;
     Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!
     Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;
     Light dies before thine uncreating word:
     Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;
     And universal darkness buries all."'

     "Stop!" cried Bull suddenly, "the gendarmes are out."
     The low lights of the  police station  were  indeed  blotted and broken
with hurrying figures,  and they  heard through  the  darkness the clash and
jingle of a disciplined cavalry.
     ' They are charging the mob!" cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm.
     "No," said Syme, "they are formed along the parade."
     "They have unslung their carbines," cried Bull dancing with excitement.
     "Yes," said Ratcliffe, "and they are going to fire on us."
     As he spoke there came a long  crackle of musketry,  and bullets seemed
to hop like hailstones on the stones in front of them.
     'The gendarmes have joined them!"  cried the Professor, and struck  his
forehead.
     "I am in the padded cell," said Bull solidly.
     There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the
swollen sea, all a sort of grey purple--
     "What  does  it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be  dead
soon."
     Syme turned to him and said--
     "You are quite hopeless, then?"
     Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly--
     "No; oddly enough I  am not quite hopeless. There  is one insane little
hope that  I cannot get out of  my mind. The  power  of this whole planet is
against us,  yet I cannot help wondering whether this one  silly little hope
is hopeless yet."
     "In what or whom is your hope?" asked Syme with curiosity.
     "In a man I never saw," said the other, looking at the leaden sea.
     "I know what you mean," said Syme in a low voice, "the man  in the dark
room. But Sunday must have killed him by now."
     "Perhaps,"  said the other steadily; "but  if so,  he was the only  man
whom Sunday found it hard to kill."
     "I heard what you said,"  said the Professor, with his back turned.  "I
also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw."
     All of  a sudden Syme, who was standing  as if blind with introspective
thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking from sleep--
     "Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!"
     "The Colonel! Yes," cried Bull, "where on earth is the Colonel?"
     "He went to speak to Renard," said the Professor.
     "We cannot leave him among all those beasts," cried Syme.  "Let us  die
like gentlemen if--"
     "Do not pity the  Colonel," said Ratcliffe, with  a pale sneer. "He  is
extremely comfortable. He is--"
     "No! no! no!" cried  Syme in a kind of frenzy, "not the Colonel too!  I
will never believe it!"
     "Will you believe  your eyes?" asked the  other,  and  pointed  to  the
beach.
     Many of their  pursuers  had  waded into the water shaking their fists,
but  the  sea was  rough, and they could  not reach the  pier. Two or  three
figures, however, stood on the beginning of the stone footway, and seemed to
be cautiously advancing down it.  The glare  of a chance lantern  lit up the
faces of the two foremost. One face wore a black half-mask, and under it the
mouth was twisting about  in such a madness of nerves that the black tuft of
beard  wriggled round and round like a restless, living thing. The other was
the  red face and white moustache of Colonel Ducroix.  They were  in earnest
consultation.
     "Yes, he is gone too," said  the  Professor, and  sat down  on a stone.
"Everything's gone. I'm gone! I can't trust  my own bodily machinery. I feel
as if my own hand might fly up and strike me."
     "When my hand flies up," said Syme, "it will strike somebody else," and
he strode along the pier towards the Colonel, the sword in one  hand and the
lantern in the other.
     As  if  to destroy the  last hope  or doubt, the Colonel, who  saw  him
coming,  pointed his revolver at him  and fired. The shot  missed Syme,  but
struck his sword, breaking  it short at the hilt. Syme  rushed on, and swung
the iron lantern above his head.
     "Judas  before  Herod!" he said,  and struck the Colonel down  upon the
stones. Then he turned to the  Secretary,  whose frightful mouth  was almost
foaming now, and held the  lamp high with so rigid and arresting  a gesture,
that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.
     "Do  you see this lantern?" cried Syme in a terrible voice. "Do you see
the cross carved on it, and the flame inside?  You did not  make it. You did
not  light it, Better men than you, men who could  believe and obey, twisted
the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street
you  walk on, there is not a thread  you  wear,  that was not  made  as this
lantern was, by  denying  your philosophy  of  dirt  and rats.  You can make
nothing. You can only destroy. You  will  destroy mankind;  you will destroy
the world.  Let that suffice you.  Yet this one old  Christian  lantern  you
shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the
wit to find it."
     He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and
then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where
it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.
     "Swords!" shouted Syme, turning his flaming face ; to the  three behind
him. "Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to die."
     His  three companions came after him  sword  in hand. Syme's  sword was
broken, but he  rent  a  bludgeon from the fist of a fisherman, flinging him
down. In a moment  they would have flung themselves upon the face of the mob
and  perished, when  an interruption  came. The Secretary, ever since Syme's
speech, had stood  with his hand to his  stricken  head as if dazed;  now he
suddenly pulled off his black mask.
     The pale face thus peeled in the lamplight revealed not so much rage as
astonishment. He put up his hand with an anxious authority.
     "There  is  some  mistake,"  he said. "Mr. Syme,  I  hardly  think  you
understand your position. I arrest you in the name of the law."
     "Of the law?" said Syme, and dropped his stick.
     "Certainly!" said the Secretary. "I am a detective from Scotland Yard,"
and he took a small blue card from his pocket.
     "And what do you suppose we are?" asked the Professor, and threw up his
arms.
     "You," said the  Secretary stiffly, "are, as I know for a fact, members
of the Supreme Anarchist Council. Disguised as one of you, I--"
     Dr. Bull tossed his sword into the sea.
     "There never was  any Supreme Anarchist Council," he said. "We were all
a lot  of silly policemen looking at each  other. And all  these nice people
who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the  dynamiters. I knew
I couldn't  be  wrong  about the mob," he said,  beaming  over  the enormous
multitude, which  stretched  away  to the distance  on  both sides.  "Vulgar
people are never mad. I'm vulgar myself, and I know. I am now going on shore
to stand a drink to everybody here."


        CHAPTER XIII. THE PURSUIT OF THE PRESIDENT

     NEXT  morning five bewildered  but hilarious people took the  boat  for
Dover. The  poor  old Colonel  might have had some cause to complain, having
been first  forced  to fight  for two  factions that didn't exist,  and then
knocked  down with an iron lantern. But he was  a magnanimous old gentleman,
and being much relieved that neither party had anything to do with dynamite,
he saw them off on the pier with great geniality.
     The five reconciled detectives had a hundred details to explain to each
other. The  Secretary had  to tell Syme  how  they  had  come to  wear masks
originally in order to approach the supposed enemy as fellow-conspirators;
     Syme had  to explain how they  had fled with such  swiftness through  a
civilised country. But above all  these  matters  of detail  which could  be
explained,  rose  the central  mountain  of the matter that  they could  not
explain. What did it all mean? If they were all harmless officers,  what was
Sunday? If he had  not  seized  the world, what on earth had he been up  to?
Inspector Ratcliffe was still gloomy about this.
     "I can't  make head  or tail of  old Sunday's little game any more than
you can," he said.  "But  whatever  else  Sunday is,  he  isn't  a blameless
citizen. Damn it! do you remember his face?"
     "I grant  you," answered Syme,  "that I have never been able  to forget
it."
     "Well," said  the  Secretary, "I  suppose we can  find  out  soon,  for
to-morrow  we have our  next general meeting. You will excuse me,"  he said,
with a rather ghastly  smile, "for being well acquainted with my secretarial
duties."
     "I suppose you are  right," said the Professor reflectively. "I suppose
we might find it out from him; but I confess that I should feel a bit afraid
of asking Sunday who he really is."
     "Why," asked the Secretary, "for fear of bombs?"
     "No," said the Professor, "for fear he might tell me."
     "Let us have some drinks," said Dr. Bull, after a silence.
     Throughout  their  whole journey by  boat and  train  they  were highly
convivial, but  they instinctively kept together. Dr. Bull,  who  had always
been the optimist of the party, endeavoured to persuade the other  four that
the whole company could take the same hansom cab from Victoria; but this was
over-ruled,  and  they went in a four-wheeler, with  Dr.  Bull on  the  box,
singing. They finished their journey at an hotel in Piccadilly Circus, so as
to  be close  to the early breakfast next morning in  Leicester  Square. Yet
even  then the adventures of  the  day were  not  entirely  over. Dr.  Bull,
discontented with the general proposal to go to bed, had strolled out of the
hotel at  about  eleven  to see and taste some  of  the beauties of  London.
Twenty minutes afterwards, however, he came back and made quite a clamour in
the hall.  Syme, who  tried at  first to  soothe  him, was forced at last to
listen to his communication with quite new attention.
     "I tell you I've seen him!" said Dr. Bull, with thick emphasis.
     "Whom?" asked Syme quickly. "Not the President?"
     "Not so bad as that," said Dr. Bull, with unnecessary laughter, "not so
bad as that. I've got him here."
     "Got whom here?" asked Syme impatiently.
     "Hairy  man,"  said the  other  lucidly,  "man  that used  to be  hairy
man--Gogol.  Here he is,"  and he  pulled forward  by a  reluctant elbow the
identical young man who five days before had marched out of the Council with
thin red hair and a pale face, the  first of all the sham anarchists who had
been exposed.
     "Why do you worry with me?" he cried. "You have expelled me as a spy."
     "We are all spies!" whispered Syme.
     "We're all spies!" shouted Dr. Bull. "Come and have a drink."
     Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards
the hotel in Leicester Square.
     "This  is more cheerful," said  Dr. Bull; "we are six men going to  ask
one man what he means."
     "I think  it is a bit queerer than that," said Syme. "I think it is six
men going to ask one man what they mean."
     They turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the
opposite  corner,  they  saw  at  once the little balcony and  a figure that
looked too  big for it. He was  sitting alone with  bent head, poring over a
newspaper. But all his  councillors,  who had come to vote him down, crossed
that Square as if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred eyes.
     They  had  disputed much upon their policy, about  whether they  should
leave the unmasked Gogol without and  begin  diplomatically, or whether they
should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme
and Bull prevailed  for  the latter course, though the Secretary to the last
asked them why they attacked Sunday so rashly.
     "My reason is quite simple," said Syme. "I attack him rashly because  I
am afraid of him."
     They followed Syme up the dark stair in silence,  and they all came out
simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad sunlight
of Sunday's smile.
     "Delightful!" he  said. "So pleased to  see you all. What an  exquisite
day it is. Is the Czar dead?"
     The Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a
dignified outburst.
     "No, sir,"  he said sternly  "there has been  no massacre. I  bring you
news of no such disgusting spectacles."
     "Disgusting  spectacles?"  repeated  the  President,   with  a  bright,
inquiring smile. "You mean Dr. Bull's spectacles?"
     The Secretary choked for  a moment,  and the  President went  on with a
sort of smooth appeal--
     "Of course, we all  have our opinions and even  our eyes, but really to
call them disgusting before the man himself--"
     Dr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table.
     "My spectacles are blackguardly,"  he said,  "but  I'm not. Look  at my
face."
     "I  dare  say  it's  the sort  of  face  that grows on one,"  said  the
President, "in fact, it grows on you; and who  am I to quarrel with the wild
fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some day."
     "We  have no time  for  tomfoolery," said  the Secretary,  breaking  in
savagely. "We have  come to know what all this means. Who are  you? What are
you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? Are you a
half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever man playing the
fool? Answer me, I tell you."
     "Candidates," murmured  Sunday, "are only required to  answer eight out
of the  seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, you want
me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table is, and what
this Council is, and what this world is for all  I  know. Well, I will go so
far as to rend  the  veil of  one mystery. If you want to know what you are,
you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses."
     "And you," said Syme, leaning forward, "what are you?"
     "I?  What am  I?"  roared  the  President, and  he  rose  slowly  to an
incredible  height,  like some enormous  wave about  to arch above them  and
break. "You want to know what I am, do you?  Bull, you are a man of science.
Grub in the roots of those trees and find out  the truth  about them.  Syme,
you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you
will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before
the truth about me. You will understand the sea,  and I  shall  be  still  a
riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the
beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf-- kings and sages,
and  poets  and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I
have  never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I  turn  to
bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now."
     Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like
some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of  the  balcony.  Yet before he
dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and thrusting his
great chin over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly--
     "There's one thing I'll tell you though about who I am. I am the man in
the dark room, who made you all policemen."
     With that he fell from the balcony, bouncing on the stones below like a
great ball of india-rubber, and went bounding off towards the corner of  the
Alhambra, where  he hailed  a  hansom-cab  and  sprang  inside  it. The  six
detectives  had been  standing  thunderstruck and livid in the  light of his
last  assertion;  but  when he disappeared  into the  cab,  Syme's practical
senses returned to him, and leaping over the balcony so recklessly as almost
to break his legs, he called another cab.
     He  and  Bull sprang  into the  cab together,  the  Professor  and  the
Inspector  into another, while the  Secretary and the  late  Gogol scrambled
into a third just  in  time to pursue the  flying Syme, who was pursuing the
flying President. Sunday led them a wild chase  towards the  north-west, his
cabman, evidently under  the  influence  of  more than  common  inducements,
urging the horse at breakneck speed. But Syme was in no mood for delicacies,
and  he stood up in his own cab  shouting,  "Stop  thief!" until crowds  ran
along  beside his cab, and  policemen began to  stop and  ask questions. All
this had  its  influence upon  the President's  cabman, who  began  to  look
dubious, and  to slow down to a trot. He  opened the trap to talk reasonably
to his fare,  and in so doing let the long whip droop over  the front of the
cab. Sunday leant  forward, seized it, and  jerked it  violently out  of the
man's  hand.  Then standing  up in front of the  cab himself,  he lashed the
horse and  roared aloud, so that they went  down  the streets like  a flying
storm.  Through street after street  and square  after square went  whirling
this preposterous vehicle,  in which the  fare was  urging the horse and the
driver trying desperately to stop it. The other three cabs came after it (if
the phrase be  permissible of a cab) like panting hounds.  Shops and streets
shot by like rattling arrows.
     At the highest ecstacy of speed, Sunday turned round on the splashboard
where  he stood, and  sticking his great grinning head out  of the cab, with
white hair whistling in the wind, he  made a horrible face at his  pursuers,
like some colossal urchin. Then raising  his right hand swiftly,  he flung a
ball  of paper in Syme's  face and vanished.  Syme  caught  the thing  while
instinctively  warding  it  off,  and  discovered that it  consisted  of two
crumpled papers. One was  addressed to himself,  and the  other to Dr. Bull,
with a very long, and it is  to be feared partly ironical, string of letters
after his name. Dr. Bull's  address was,  at  any rate,  considerably longer
than  his  communication, for the  communication  consisted entirely  of the
words:--

     "What about Martin Tupper now?"

     "What  does  the old maniac mean?" asked  Bull,  staring  at the words.
"What does yours say, Syme?"
     Syme's message was, at any rate, longer, and ran as follows:--
     "No  one  would regret anything in the nature of an interference by the
Archdeacon more than I. I trust it will  not come to that. But, for the last
time, where are your  goloshes?  The thing is too bad, especially after what
uncle said."
     The  President's cabman seemed to be regaining some  control  over  his
horse, and the pursuers gained a little as they swept round into the Edgware
Road.  And here  there  occurred  what seemed to the  allies  a providential
stoppage. Traffic of every kind was  swerving  to right or left or stopping,
for  down  the  long road  was coming  the unmistakable roar  announcing the
fire-engine, which  in a few  seconds went by like a brazen thunderbolt. But
quick  as  it went  by,  Sunday  had bounded out of  his cab, sprung at  the
fire-engine, caught  it, slung  himself  on  to  it,  and  was  seen  as  he
disappeared  in the noisy  distance talking  to the  astonished fireman with
explanatory gestures.
     "After him!" howled Syme. "He can't go astray now. There's no mistaking
a fire-engine."
     The three cabmen, who had been stunned  for a moment, whipped up  their
horses and  slightly decreased the distance  between  themselves  and  their
disappearing  prey. The  President acknowledged  this proximity by coming to
the back  of  the  car, bowing  repeatedly,  kissing  his  hand, and finally
flinging a neatly-folded note into  the bosom of Inspector  Ratcliffe.  When
that gentleman opened it, not  without impatience, he found it contained the
words:--

     "Fly  at  once. The truth about  your trouser-stretchers  is  known.--A
FRIEND."

     The  fire-engine had struck  still farther  to the north, into a region
that  they  did not recognise; and as  it ran  by a  line of  high  railings
shadowed with trees, the six  friends were startled,  but somewhat relieved,
to  see the President leap  from  the fire-engine,  though  whether  through
another  whim or  the increasing protest of his entertainers they  could not
see. Before the three cabs, however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone
up the high railings like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished
in a darkness of leaves.
     Syme  with a  furious gesture  stopped his cab,  jumped out, and sprang
also to the  escalade. When  he had one leg over the fence and  his  friends
were following, he turned  a  face  on them  which shone  quite  pale in the
shadow.
     "What place can this  be?"  he asked. "Can it be the old devil's house?
I've heard he has a house in North London."
     "All  the  better," said the  Secretary grimly,  planting a  foot in  a
foothold, "we shall find him at home."
     "No,  but it isn't that