a voice. "Nobody takes any notice of me!"

"Who is it?" muttered Sir John.

"Alloyd, the architect," Edward Henry answered, and then calling loud,
"Come up here, Alloyd."

The muffled and coated figure approached, hesitated, and then joined
the other two in the cage.

"Let me introduce Mr. Alloyd, the architect--Sir John Pilgrim," said
Edward Henry.

"Ah!" said Sir John, bending towards Alloyd. "Are you the genius who
draws those amusing little lines and scrawls on transparent paper, Mr.
Alloyd? Tell me, are they really necessary for a building, or do you
only do them for your own fun? Quite between ourselves, you know! I've
often wondered."

Said Mr. Alloyd, with a pale smile:

"Of course everyone looks on the architect as a joke!" The pause was
somewhat difficult.

"You promised us rockets, Mr. Machin," said Sir John. "My mind yearns
for rockets."

"Right you are!" Edward Henry complied. Close by, but somewhat above
them, was the crane-engine, manned by an engineer whom Edward Henry
was paying for overtime. A signal was given, and the cage containing
the proprietor and the architect of the theatre and Sir John Pilgrim
bounded most startlingly up into the air. Simultaneously it began to
revolve rapidly on its cable, as such cages will, whether filled with
bricks or with celebrities.

"Oh!" ejaculated Sir John, terror-struck, clinging hard to the side of
the cage.

"Oh!" ejaculated Mr. Alloyd, also clinging hard.

"I want you to see London," said Edward Henry, who had been through
the experience before.

The wind blew cold above the chimneys.

The cage came to a standstill exactly at the peak of the other crane.
London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of
Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street
and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated
map, over which crawled mannikins and toy-autobuses. At their feet a
long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another,
with the guests of the evening. The Metropolis stretched away, lifting
to the north, and sinking to the south into the jewelled river on
whose curved bank rose messages of light concerning whisky, tea and
beer. The peaceful nocturnal roar of the city, dwindling every moment
now, reached them like an emanation from another world.

"You asked for a rocket, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "You shall have
it."

He had taken a box of fusees from his pocket. H