“I’m after telling you it’ll be to-morrow night or more likely Saturday—­Sunday at the latest.”  A mildly impatient accent alone betrayed resentment of the snub.  “I’ll know in good time, long before the hour appointed; and that ought to do, providing you on your part are prepared.”

“An hour’s notice will be ample,” Victor agreed.  “We have been ready for days, needing only the knowledge you bring us—­or will, when you have it definitely.”

The Irishman chuckled.

“It’s hard to believe.  Not that I’d dream of doubting your statement, sir—­but yourself won’t be denying you must have worked fast to organize England for revolution in less than three weeks.”

“I have been busy,” Victor admitted.  “But the work was not so difficult ...  Seeds of revolution are easily sown in land thoroughly tilled by forces of discontent.  And what land has been better tilled?  To vary the figure:  England is all seething beneath a thin crust of custom and established habit whose integrity a conservative and reactionary government has ever since the war been struggling desperately to preserve.  The blow we shall strike within three days will shatter that crust in a hundred places.”

“And let Hell loose!” the Irishman added with a nervous laugh.

In a dry voice Victor commented:  “Precisely.”

“Omelettes,” Sturm interjected, assertively, “are not made without breaking eggs.”

“And all rivers, no doubt, flow to the sea?  What a lot you know, Herr Sturm!  Is it the Portfolio of the Minister of Education you’ve picked out for your very own, after the explosion comes off—­if it’s a fair question?”

“You Irish are all mad,” the German complained, sourly—­“mad about laughing.  Even me you will laugh at, while you trust your very life to me, while you trust to my genius to make Soviet England possible and Ireland free.”

“Faith! you’re away off there, me friend.  If it was you and your genius I had to trust, it’s meself would turn violent reactionary and advise Ireland to be a good dog and come to England’s heel and lick England’s hand and live off England’s leavings.  I’ll trust nobody in this black business but himself—­Number One.”

“You have changed your tune since that night at the Red Moon,” Sturm reminded him, angrily.

“I had me lesson then and there,” Eleven agreed, cheerfully.  “And I don’t mind telling you, the next time I’m taken with a fancy to call me soul me own, I’ll be after asking himself first for a license.”

Victor put a period to the passage with a dispassionate “By your leave, gentlemen—­that will do.”  To the Irishman he added:  “You understand the danger, I believe, of remaining within the condemned area—­that is to say, except in the open air?”

“Can’t say I do, altogether.”

“It is simple:  no person in any house supplied by the mains of the Westminster gas works will be safe for hours after the formula of Thirteen has begun its work.  My advice to you is to keep out of the district entirely.”