An old world in miniature. Can’t you see it?’

‘M-yes; but I’ve got to pay for it if it’s a blow-out, dear man.’

‘They can sing the old war songs in the streets. They can get word-drunk, and make crowds, and invade privacy in the genuine old-fashioned way; and they’ll do the voting trick as often as you ask ’em a question.’

‘Too good!’ said Vincent.

‘You unbelieving Jew! I’ve got a dozen head aboard here. I’ll put you through direct. Sample ’em yourself.’

He lifted the switch and we listened. Our passengers on the lower deck at once, but not less than five at a time, explained themselves to Vincent. They had been taken from the bosom of their families, stripped of their possessions, given food without finger-bowls, and cast into captivity in a noisome dungeon.

‘But look here,’ said Arnott aghast; ‘they’re saying what isn’t true. My lower deck isn’t noisome, and I saw to the finger-bowls myself.’

‘My people talk like that sometimes in Little Russia,’ said Dragomiroff. ‘We reason with them. We never kill. No!’

‘But it’s not true,’ Arnott insisted. ‘What can you do with people who don’t tell facts? They’re mad!’

‘Hsh!’ said Pirolo, his hand to his ear. ‘It is such a little time since all the Planet told lies.’

We heard Vincent silkily sympathetic. Would they, he asked, repeat their assertions in public—before a vast public? Only let Vincent give them a chance, and the Planet, they vowed, should ring with their wrongs. Their aim in life—two women and a man explained it together—was to reform the world. Oddly enough, this also had been Vincent’s life-dream. He offered them an arena in which to explain, and by their living example to raise the Planet to loftier levels. He was eloquent on the moral uplift of a simple, old-world life presented in its entirety to a deboshed civilisation.

Could they—would they—for three months certain, devote themselves under his auspices, as missionaries, to the elevation of mankind at a place called Earl’s Court, which he said, with some truth, was one of the intellectual centres of the Planet? They thanked him, and demanded (we could hear his chuckle of delight) time to discuss and to vote on the matter. The vote, solemnly managed by counting heads—one head, one vote—was favourable. His offer, therefore, was accepted, and they moved a vote of thanks to him in two speeches—one by what they called the ‘proposer’ and the other by the ‘seconder.’

Vincent threw over to us, his voice shaking with gratitude:

‘I’ve got ’em! Did you hear those speeches? That’s Nature, dear men. Art can’t teach that. And they voted as easily as lying. I’ve never had a troupe of natural liars before. Bless you, dear men! Remember, you’re on my free lists for ever, anywhere—all of you. Oh, Gerolstein will be sick—sick!’

‘Then you think they’ll do?’ said De Forest.

‘Do? The Little Village’ll go crazy! I’ll knock up a series of old-world plays for ’em. Their voices will make you laugh and cry. My God, dear men, where do you suppose they picked up all their misery from, on this sweet earth? I’ll have a pageant of the world’s beginnings, and Mosenthal shall do the music. I’ll—’

‘Go and knock up a village for ’em by to-night. We’ll meet you at No. 15 West Landing Tower,’ said De Forest. ‘Remember the rest will be coming along tomorrow.’

‘Let ’em all come!’ said Vincent. ‘You don’t know how hard it is nowadays even for me, to find something that really gets under the public’s damned iridium-plated hide. But I’ve got it at last. Good-bye!’

‘Well,’ said De Forest when we had finished laughing, ‘if any one understood corruption in London I might have played off Vincent against Gerolstein, and sold my captives at enormous prices. As it is, I shall have to be their legal adviser to-night when the contracts are signed.