eath! Extinction! In my life before I slept I had worked out
that pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, a
multitude--. And meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag."
His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave his
clenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore archaic curses.
His gestures had the quality of physical threats.
"I do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark, and you keep
me in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no
good purpose. For no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of the
consequences. Once I come at my power--"
He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
"I take it this is a message to the Council," said Howard.
Graham had a momentary impulse to leap upon the man, fell or stun him.
It must have shown upon his face; at any rate Howard's movement was
quick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from
the nineteenth century was alone.
For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
flung them down. "What a fool I have been!" he said, and gave way to
his anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a long
time he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his
own folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because
he did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to his
anger--because he was afraid of Fear.
Presently he found himself reasoning with himself This imprisonment was
unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of the
time permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were two
hundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victorian
generation. It was not likely they would be less--humane. Yet they
had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well as
chastity?
His imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him.
The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, though
for the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. "Why should
anything be done to me?"
"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "I
can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they
ask me for it instead of cooping me up?"
He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possible
intentions. He be
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