d to Woodhouse. 'It ought to be pretty useful--for
us.'

'What d'you mean?' said Ollyett.

'For our side. They are all Rads who are mixed up in this--from the
Chief Constable down. There must be a Question. There must be a
Question.'

'Yes, but I wanted the charge withdrawn in my own way,' Woodhouse
insisted.

'That's nothing to do with the case. It's the legality of your silly
methods. You wouldn't understand if I talked till morning,' He began to
pace the room, his hands behind him. 'I wonder if I can get it through
our Whip's thick head that it's a chance.... That comes of stuffing the
Bench with radical tinkers,' he muttered.

'Oh, sit down!' said Woodhouse.

'Where's your lawyer to be found now?' he jerked out.

'At the Trefoil,' said Bat promptly. 'I gave him the stage-box for
to-night. He's an artist too.'

'Then I'm going to see him,' said Pallant. 'Properly handled this ought
to be a godsend for our side.' He withdrew without apology.

'Certainly, this thing keeps on opening up, and up,' I remarked inanely.

'It's beyond me!' said Bat. 'I don't think if I'd known I'd have
ever ... Yes, I would, though. He said my home address was--'

'It was his tone--his tone!' Ollyett almost shouted. Woodhouse said
nothing, but his face whitened as he brooded.

'Well, any way,' Bat went on, 'I'm glad I always believed in God and
Providence and all those things. Else I should lose my nerve. We've put
it over the whole world--the full extent of the geographical globe. We
couldn't stop it if we wanted to now. It's got to burn itself out. I'm
not in charge any more. What d'you expect'll happen next. Angels?'

I expected nothing. Nothing that I expected approached what I got.
Politics are not my concern, but, for the moment, since it seemed that
they were going to 'huckle' with the rest, I took an interest in them.
They impressed me as a dog's life without a dog's decencies, and I was
confirmed in this when an unshaven and unwashen Pallant called on me at
ten o'clock one morning, begging for a bath and a couch.

'Bail too?' I asked. He was in evening dress and his eyes were sunk feet
in his head.

'No,' he said hoarsely. 'All night sitting. Fifteen divisions. 'Nother
to-night. Your place was nearer than mine, so--' He began to undress
in the hall.

When he awoke at one o'clock he gave me lurid accounts of what he said
was history, but which was obviously collective hysteria. There had been
a political crisis.