The rest of the hall was almost empty.  A table stood at the foot of the platform, and here were three or four of the usual recording machines; a dozen men sat here too, some writing, some listening, leaning back in their chairs.  In the middle, on the opposite side of the table, stood a structure resembling a witness-box, ascended by two steps, railed in on the three other sides.  A man with a pointed grey beard was leaving the box as the priest came in.  Standing about the hall also were perhaps twenty other persons apparently listening to the President or waiting their turn.  There were tall doors at the end of the hall, closed and guarded by police, and in the middle of each of the long sides two other doors, also closed, communicating with other rooms and passages, in one of which the priest had waited just now until the Council could see him.

Except for the rapid, heavy voice of the President the hall was very quiet, and from the very silence and motionlessness of those present there exhaled a certain air of tenseness.  It would have been impossible for any intelligent person not to notice it, and for the priest, with his nerves strung, as they now were, to an extreme pitch of sensitiveness and attention, the atmosphere was overwhelmingly significant.  Of what it signified he had no idea, beyond the knowledge he already possessed—­that the hours were running out, and that midnight would see a decisive event which, though it must mean ultimately the ruin of every person present, might, for all that, change the line of the world’s development.  A protest so desperate as this could not but have a tremendous effect upon human sentiment.  He had caught a glimpse an hour before, as he whirled through the streets, far up against the luminous slay westwards, of a string of floating specks, which he knew to be the guard-boats, strung out now, night and day, in a vast circle round the city.  At midnight they would surely move. . . .

Dark had already fallen outside, but the hall was as light as day with the hidden electric burners above the cornices, and he could see not only the faces, but the very expressions that characterized them.  One thing at least was common to them all—­a silent, fierce excitement. . . .

It would be about ten minutes before the priest’s turn came to face the Council.  It seemed that the member to whom the President was speaking was not satisfied, and question and answer, all in rapid, unintelligible German, went on without intermission.  Once or twice there was a murmur of applause, and more than once the President beat his hand heavily and emphatically upon the desk before him to enforce his point.  The priest guessed that the unanimity was not perhaps as perfect as the world had been given to believe.  However, guessing was useless.  The President leaned back at last, and Hardy stepped forward to his chair and whispered.  The President nodded, and the next moment, at a sign from Hardy, the two police urged the priest forward by the arms across the platform, down the steps, and so round to the right up into the witness-box.  Then the President, who had still been whispering behind his hand, turned abruptly in his chair and faced him.