jugglers, acrobats, singers of both sexes,
and so on, going in and out all day long. The police paid no attention
to new faces, you see. The top floor happened, most conveniently, to
stand empty then."

X interrupted himself to attack impassively, with measured movements,
a bombe glacee which the waiter had just set down on the table. He
swallowed carefully a few spoonfuls of the iced sweet, and asked me,
"Did you ever hear of Stone's Dried Soup?"

"Hear of what?"

"It was," X pursued, evenly, "a comestible article once rather
prominently advertised in the dailies, but which never, somehow, gained
the favour of the public. The enterprise fizzled out, as you say here.
Parcels of their stock could be picked up at auctions at considerably
less than a penny a pound. The group bought some of it, and an agency
for Stone's Dried Soup was started on the top floor. A perfectly
respectable business. The stuff, a yellow powder of extremely
unappetizing aspect, was put up in large square tins, of which six went
to a case. If anybody ever came to give an order, it was, of course,
executed. But the advantage of the powder was this, that things could be
concealed in it very conveniently. Now and then a special case got put
on a van and sent off to be exported abroad under the very nose of the
policeman on duty at the corner. You understand?"

"I think I do," I said, with an expressive nod at the remnants of the
bombe melting slowly in the dish.

"Exactly. But the cases were useful in another way, too. In the
basement, or in the cellar at the back, rather, two printing-presses
were established. A lot of revolutionary literature of the most
inflammatory kind was got away from the house in Stone's Dried Soup
cases. The brother of our anarchist young lady found some occupation
there. He wrote articles, helped to set up type and pull off the sheets,
and generally assisted the man in charge, a very able young fellow
called Sevrin.

"The guiding spirit of that group was a fanatic of social revolution. He
is dead now. He was an engraver and etcher of genius. You must have seen
his work. It is much sought after by certain amateurs now. He began by
being revolutionary in his art, and ended by becoming a revolutionist,
after his wife and child had died in want and misery. He used to say
that the bourgeoisie, the smug, overfed lot, had killed them. That was
his real belief. He still worked at his art and led a double life. He
was tall, g