“Didn’t you have assurance?”

Graham thought.  “Insurance?”

“Yes—­Insurance.  I remember that was the older word.  They are insuring your life.  Dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lions are being put on you.  And further on other people are buying annuities.  They do that on everybody who is at all prominent.  Look there!”

A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple.  “Anuetes on the Propraiet’r—­x 5 pr.  G.”  The people began to boo and shout at this, a number of hard breathing, wild-eyed men came running past, clawing with hooked fingers at the air.  There was a furious crush about a little doorway.

Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation.  “Seventeen per cent, per annum is their annuity on you.  They would not pay so much per cent, if they could see you now, Sire.  But they do not know.  Your own annuities used to be a very safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, of course.  This is probably a desperate bid.  I doubt if people will get their money.”

The crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for some time they could move neither forward nor backward.  Graham noticed what appeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators, and was reminded again of the economic independence of their sex.  They seemed remarkably well able to take care of themselves in the crowd, using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to his cost.  One curly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, looked steadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognised him, and then, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm in a scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient as Chaldea that he had found favour in her eyes.  And then a lank, grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help, blind to all earthly things save that glaring bait, thrust between them in a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring “X 5 pr.  G.”

“I want to get out of this,” said Graham to Asano.  “This is not what I came to see.  Show me the workers.  I want to see the people in blue.  These parasitic lunatics—­”

He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.

CHAPTER XXI

THE UNDER-SIDE

From the Business Quarter they presently passed by the running ways into a remote quarter of the city, where the bulk of the manufactures was done.  On their way the platforms crossed the Thames twice, and passed in a broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the city from the North.  In both cases his impression was swift and in both very vivid.  The river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water, overarched by buildings, and vanishing either way into a blackness starred with receding