Getting out of the car and leaving it by the curb, we walked with some difficulty along the crowded pavement of King William Street and entered the open door of a large insurance office.  It was a corner house, and we chose it as commanding a view in every direction.  Ascending the stair, we passed through what I suppose to have been the board-room, for eight elderly men were seated round a long table in the centre of it.  The high window was open and we all stepped out upon the balcony.  From it we could see the crowded city streets radiating in every direction, while below us the road was black from side to side with the tops of the motionless taxis.  All, or nearly all, had their heads pointed outwards, showing how the terrified men of the city had at the last moment made a vain endeavor to rejoin their families in the suburbs or the country.  Here and there amid the humbler cabs towered the great brass-spangled motor-car of some wealthy magnate, wedged hopelessly among the dammed stream of arrested traffic.  Just beneath us there was such a one of great size and luxurious appearance, with its owner, a fat old man, leaning out, half his gross body through the window, and his podgy hand, gleaming with diamonds, outstretched as he urged his chauffeur to make a last effort to break through the press.

A dozen motor-buses towered up like islands in this flood, the passengers who crowded the roofs lying all huddled together and across each others’ laps like a child’s toys in a nursery.  On a broad lamp pedestal in the centre of the roadway, a burly policeman was standing, leaning his back against the post in so natural an attitude that it was hard to realize that he was not alive, while at his feet there lay a ragged newsboy with his bundle of papers on the ground beside him.  A paper-cart had got blocked in the crowd, and we could read in large letters, black upon yellow, “Scene at Lord’s.  County Match Interrupted.”  This must have been the earliest edition, for there were other placards bearing the legend, “Is It the End?  Great Scientist’s Warning.”  And another, “Is Challenger Justified?  Ominous Rumours.”

Challenger pointed the latter placard out to his wife, as it thrust itself like a banner above the throng.  I could see him throw out his chest and stroke his beard as he looked at it.  It pleased and flattered that complex mind to think that London had died with his name and his words still present in their thoughts.  His feelings were so evident that they aroused the sardonic comment of his colleague.

“In the limelight to the last, Challenger,” he remarked.

“So it would appear,” he answered complacently.  “Well,” he added as he looked down the long vista of the radiating streets, all silent and all choked up with death, “I really see no purpose to be served by our staying any longer in London.  I suggest that we return at once to Rotherfield and then take counsel as to how we shall most profitably employ the years which lie before us.”