The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of a distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences.  The crop-headed lad handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a nineteenth century printing machine.  Then they ran the entire thing on its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall.  They made some connexion and the machine became energetic and swift.

“What is that doing?” asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer.  “Is that—­some sort of force—­laid on?”

“Yes,” said the man with the flaxen beard.

“Who is that?” He indicated the archway behind him.

The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in an undertone, “He is Howard, your chief guardian.  You see, Sire—­it’s a little difficult to explain.  The Council appoints a guardian and assistants.  This hall has under certain restrictions been public.  In order that people might satisfy themselves.  We have barred the doorways for the first time.  But I think—­if you don’t mind, I will leave him to explain.”

“Odd!” said Graham.  “Guardian?  Council?” Then turning his back on the new comer, he asked in an undertone, “Why is this man glaring at me?  Is he a mesmerist?”

“Mesmerist!  He is a capillotomist.”

“Capillotomist!”

“Yes—­one of the chief.  His yearly fee is sixdoz lions.”

It sounded sheer nonsense.  Graham snatched at the last phrase with an unsteady mind.  “Sixdoz lions?” he said.

“Didn’t you have lions?  I suppose not.  You had the old pounds?  They are our monetary units.”

“But what was that you said—­sixdoz?”

“Yes.  Six dozen, Sire.  Of course things, even these little things, have altered.  You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system—­tens, and little hundreds and thousands.  We have eleven numerals now.  We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad.  Very simple?”

“I suppose so,” said Graham.  “But about this cap—­what was it?”

The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.

“Here are your clothes!” he said.  Graham turned round sharply and saw the tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably new garments over his arm.  The crop-headed boy, by means of one ringer, was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he had arrived.  Graham stared at the completed suit.  “You don’t mean to say—!”

“Just made,” said the tailor.  He dropped the garments at the feet of Graham, walked to the bed, on which Graham had so recently been lying, flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking-glass.  As he did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner.  The man with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out by the archway.