The Man Who Was Thursday | Page 9

at conversation, somewhat disorganised in
themselves, were cut short finally as by a thunderbolt by the actual
appearance of the lobster. Syme tasted it, and found it particularly good.
Then he suddenly began to eat with great rapidity and appetite.
"Excuse me if I enjoy myself rather obviously!" he said to Gregory,
smiling. "I don't often have the luck to have a dream like this. It is new
to me for a nightmare to lead to a lobster. It is commonly the other
way."
"You are not asleep, I assure you," said Gregory. "You are, on the

contrary, close to the most actual and rousing moment of your
existence. Ah, here comes your champagne! I admit that there may be a
slight disproportion, let us say, between the inner arrangements of this
excellent hotel and its simple and unpretentious exterior. But that is all
our modesty. We are the most modest men that ever lived on earth."
"And who are we?" asked Syme, emptying his champagne glass.
"It is quite simple," replied Gregory. "We are the serious anarchists, in
whom you do not believe."
"Oh!" said Syme shortly. "You do yourselves well in drinks."
"Yes, we are serious about everything," answered Gregory.
Then after a pause he added--
"If in a few moments this table begins to turn round a little, don't put it
down to your inroads into the champagne. I don't wish you to do
yourself an injustice."
"Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm;
"but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition. May I
smoke?"
"Certainly!" said Gregory, producing a cigar-case. "Try one of mine."
Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out of his
waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a long
cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he performed these
rites with so much composure, for almost before he had begun them the
table at which he sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then
rapidly, as if at an insane seance.
"You must not mind it," said Gregory; "it's a kind of screw."
"Quite so," said Syme placidly, "a kind of screw. How simple that is!"
The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering

across the room in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a factory
chimney, and the two, with their chairs and table, shot down through
the floor as if the earth had swallowed them. They went rattling down a
kind of roaring chimney as rapidly as a lift cut loose, and they came
with an abrupt bump to the bottom. But when Gregory threw open a
pair of doors and let in a red subterranean light, Syme was still smoking
with one leg thrown over the other, and had not turned a yellow hair.
Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which was
the red light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as big as a
fireplace, fixed over a small but heavy iron door. In the door there was
a sort of hatchway or grating, and on this Gregory struck five times. A
heavy voice with a foreign accent asked him who he was. To this he
gave the more or less unexpected reply, "Mr. Joseph Chamberlain."
The heavy hinges began to move; it was obviously some kind of
password.
Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a
network of steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering
pattern was really made up of ranks and ranks of rifles and revolvers,
closely packed or interlocked.
"I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities," said Gregory; "we
have to be very strict here."
"Oh, don't apologise," said Syme. "I know your passion for law and
order," and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel weapons.
With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he looked a
singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down that shining
avenue of death.
They passed through several such passages, and came out at last into a
queer steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in shape, but
presenting, with its tiers of benches, something of the appearance of a
scientific lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or pistols in this
apartment, but round the walls of it were hung more dubious and
dreadful shapes, things that looked like the bulbs of iron plants, or the
eggs of iron birds. They were bombs, and the very room itself seemed

like the inside of a bomb. Syme knocked his cigar ash off against the
wall, and went in.
"And now, my dear Mr. Syme," said Gregory, throwing