d the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you think of
this?"

"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.

"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but
this is our modern development See here." The little figure repeated
its evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," and with a click
another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to
the dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice
towards the lift as he did these things.

It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad with features of the
Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a
complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into
the room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was
invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some
instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and
with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an
incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a
number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out
until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each
shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that
at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs.
At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift,
behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a
faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another
moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailor
replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered
him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim of
the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity.

The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and
went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of
a distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The cropheaded lad
handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing
this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a
nineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing on
its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where
a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. They made some
connexion and the machine became ener