his eyes down the rest of the questions. They chiefly referred to
previous remarks of his own, but twice, even in them, Felsenburgh's name
appeared.

He laid the paper down and considered a little.

It was very curious, he thought, how this man's name was in every one's
mouth, in spite of the fact that so little was known about him. He had
bought in the streets, out of curiosity, three photographs that
professed to represent this strange person, and though one of them might
be genuine they all three could not be. He drew them out of a
pigeon-hole, and spread them before him.

One represented a fierce, bearded creature like a Cossack, with round
staring eyes. No; intrinsic evidence condemned this: it was exactly how
a coarse imagination would have pictured a man who seemed to be having a
great influence in the East.

The second showed a fat face with little eyes and a chin-beard. That
might conceivably be genuine: he turned it over and saw the name of a
New York firm on the back. Then he turned to the third. This presented a
long, clean-shaven face with pince-nez, undeniably clever, but scarcely
strong: and Felsenburgh was obviously a strong man.

Percy inclined to think the second was the most probable; but they were
all unconvincing; and he shuffled them carelessly together and replaced
them.

Then he put his elbows on the table, and began to think.

He tried to remember what Mr. Varhaus, the American senator, had told
him of Felsenburgh; yet it did not seem sufficient to account for the
facts. Felsenburgh, it seemed, had employed none of those methods common
in modern politics. He controlled no newspapers, vituperated nobody,
championed nobody: he had no picked underlings; he used no bribes; there
were no monstrous crimes alleged against him. It seemed rather as if his
originality lay in his clean hands and his stainless past--that, and his
magnetic character. He was the kind of figure that belonged rather to
the age of chivalry: a pure, clean, compelling personality, like a
radiant child. He had taken people by surprise, then, rising out of the
heaving dun-coloured waters of American socialism like a vision--from
those waters so fiercely restrained from breaking into storm over since
the extraordinary social revolution under Mr. Hearst's disciples, a
century ago. That had been the end of plutocracy; the famous old laws of
1914 had burst some of the stinking bubbles of the time; and the
enactments of 1916 and