rom the flying stages warned the world
that one of the aeroplanes was ready to start. He remained for a space
gazing towards the glaring stage. Then his eyes went back to the
northward constellations.

For a long time he was silent. "This," he said at last, smiling in the
shadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St.
Paul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"

Thence Graham was taken by Asano along devious ways to the great gambling
and business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in the city were
lost and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminable series of
very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleries into which
opened thousands of offices, and traversed by a complicated multitude of
bridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze and cable leaps. And
here more than anywhere the note of vehement vitality, of uncontrollable,
hasty activity, rose high. Everywhere was violent advertisement, until
his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. And Babble Machines of
a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filled the air with strenuous
squealing and an idiotic slang. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop,
Bonanza," "Gollipers come and hark!"

The place seemed to him to be dense with people either profoundly
agitated or swelling with obscure cunning, yet he learnt that the place
was comparatively empty, that the great political convulsion of the last
few days had reduced transactions to an unprecedented minimum. In one
huge place were long avenues of roulette tables, each with an excited,
undignified crowd about it; in another a yelping Babel of white-faced
women and red-necked leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares of an
absolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes,
paid a dividend of ten per cent, and cancelled a certain proportion of
its shares by means of a lottery wheel.

These business activities were prosecuted with an energy that readily
passed into violence, and Graham approaching a dense crowd found at its
centre a couple of prominent merchants in violent controversy with teeth
and nails on some delicate point of business etiquette. Something still
remained in life to be fought for. Further he had a shock at a vehement
announcement in phonetic letters of scarlet flame, each twice the height
of a man, that "WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R."

"Who's the proprietor?" he asked.

"Yo