him now, that Felsenburgh's approval was a thing to die for if
necessary--these things had finally prevailed. He left behind him at
home his secretary, with instructions that no expense was to be spared
in communicating with him should any news of his wife arrive during his
absence.

It was terribly hot this morning, and, by the time that he reached the
top he noticed that the monster in the net was already fitted into its
white aluminium casing, and that the fans within the corridor and saloon
were already active. He stepped inside to secure a seat in the saloon,
set his bag down, and after a word or two with the guard, who, of
course, had not yet been informed of their destination, learning that
the others were not yet come, he went out again on to the platform for
coolness' sake, and to brood in peace.

London looked strange this morning, he thought. Here beneath him was the
common, parched somewhat with the intense heat of the previous week,
stretching for perhaps half-a-mile--tumbled ground, smooth stretches of
turf, and the heads of heavy trees up to the first house-roofs, set,
too, it seemed, in bowers of foliage. Then beyond that began the serried
array, line beyond line, broken in one spot by the gleam of a
river-reach, and then on again fading beyond eyesight. But what
surprised him was the density of the air; it was now, as old books
related it had been in the days of smoke. There was no freshness, no
translucence of morning atmosphere; it was impossible to point in any
one direction to the source of this veiling gloom, for on all sides it
was the same. Even the sky overhead lacked its blue; it appeared painted
with a muddy brush, and the sun shewed the same faint tinge of red. Yes,
it was like that, he said wearily to himself--like a second-rate sketch;
there was no sense of mystery as of a veiled city, but rather unreality.
The shadows seemed lacking in definiteness, the outlines and grouping in
coherence. A storm was wanted, he reflected; or even, it might be, one
more earthquake on the other side of the world would, in wonderful
illustration of the globe's unity, relieve the pressure on this side.
Well, well; the journey would be worth taking even for the interest of
observing climatic changes; but it would be terribly hot, he mused, by
the time the south of France was reached.

Then his thoughts leaped back to their own gnawing misery.

* * * * *

It was another ten minutes before he saw the scarle