Is this the beginning of the Master’s rule?  For a long time after he had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines pursued him; “Galloop, Galloop,” “Yahahah, Yaha, Yap!  Yaha!” Is this the beginning of the Master’s rule?

Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely on the nature of the Parisian struggle.  “This disarmament!  What was their trouble?  What does it all mean?” Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassure him that it was “all right.”

“But these outrages!”

“You cannot have an omelette,” said Asano, “without breaking eggs.  It is only the rough people.  Only in one part of the city.  All the rest is all right.  The Parisian labourers are the wildest in the world, except ours.”

“What! the Londoners?”

“No, the Japanese.  They have to be kept in order.”

“But burning women alive!”

“A Commune!” said Asano.  “They would rob you of your property.  They would do away with property and give the world over to mob rule.  You are Master, the world is yours.  But there will be no Commune here.  There is no need for black police here.

“And every consideration has been shown.  It is their own negroes—­French speaking negroes.  Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo.”

“Regiments?” said Graham, “I thought there was only one—­”

“No,” said Asano, and glanced at him.  “There is more than one.”

Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.

“I did not think,” he began and stopped abruptly.  He went off at a tangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines.  For the most part, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, and Graham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned, in all the more comfortable private apartments of the city were fixed Babble Machines that would speak directly a lever was pulled.  The tenant of the apartment could connect this with the cables of any of the great News Syndicates that he preferred.  When he learnt this presently, he demanded the reason of their absence from his own suite of apartments.  Asano was embarrassed.  “I never thought,” he said.  “Ostrog must have had them removed.”

Graham stared.  “How was I to know?” he exclaimed.

“Perhaps he thought they would annoy you,” said Asano.

“They must be replaced directly I return,” said Graham after an interval.

He found a difficulty in understanding that this news room and the dining hall were not great central places, that such establishments were repeated almost beyond counting all over the city.  But ever and again during the night’s expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, “Galloop, Galloop!” or the shrill “Yahaha, Yaha Yap!—­Hear a live paper yelp!” of its chief rival.