u."

"But what do they assure me?" he asked. "What do they assure me?"

"Didn't you have assurance?"

Graham thought. "Insurance?"

"Yes--Insurance. I remember that was the older word. They are insuring
your life. Dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lions
are being put on you. And further on other people are buying annuities.
They do that on everybody who is at all prominent. Look there!"

A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen
suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anuetes
on the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G." The people began to boo and shout at
this, a number of hard breathing, wild-eyed men came running past,
clawing with hooked fingers at the air. There was a furious crush about a
little doorway.

Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. "Seventeen per cent, per
annum is their annuity on you. They would not pay so much per cent, if
they could see you now, Sire. But they do not know. Your own annuities
used to be a very safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, of
course. This is probably a desperate bid. I doubt if people will get
their money."

The crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for some
time they could move neither forward nor backward. Graham noticed what
appeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators,
and was reminded again of the economic independence of their sex. They
seemed remarkably well able to take care of themselves in the crowd,
using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to his cost. One
curly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, looked
steadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognised him, and
then, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm in a
scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient as
Chaldea that he had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank,
grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help,
blind to all earthly things save that glaring bait, thrust between them
in a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring "X 5 pr. G."

"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not what I
came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These
parasitic lunatics--"

He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.

CHAPTER XXI

THE UNDER-SIDE

From the Business Quarter they presently passed by the running ways