‘Bluthner it is; and here’s Mulligan and Keefe—­on their feet.’

’Bring ’em up please, Blut.  We’re supposed to be the Four in charge of this hamlet.  What we says, goes.  And, De Forest, what do you say?’

‘Nothing—­yet,’ De Forest answered, as we made room for the panting, reeling men. ‘You’ve cut out of system.  Well?’

‘Tell the steward to send down drinks, please,’ Arnott whispered to an orderly at his side.

‘Good!’ said the Mayor, smacking his dry lips.  ’Now I suppose we can take it, De Forest, that henceforward the Board will administer us direct?’

‘Not if the Board can avoid it,’ De Forest laughed.  ’The A.B.C. is responsible for the planetary traffic only.’

‘And all that that implies.’  The big Four who ran Chicago chanted their Magna Charta like children at school.

‘Well, get on,’ said De Forest wearily.  ’What is your silly trouble anyway?’

‘Too much dam’ Democracy,’ said the Mayor, laying his hand on De Forest’s knee.

‘So?  I thought Illinois had had her dose of that.’

’She has.  That’s why.  Blut, what did you do with our prisoners last night?’

’Locked ’em in the water-tower to prevent the women killing ’em,’ the Chief of Police replied.  ‘I’m too blind to move just yet, but—­’

’Arnott, send some of your people, please, and fetch ’em along,’ said De Forest.

‘They’re triple-circuited,’ the Mayor called.  ’You’ll have to blow out three fuses.’  He turned to De Forest, his large outline just visible in the paling darkness.  ’I hate to throw any more work on the Board.  I’m an administrator myself, but we’ve had a little fuss with our Serviles.  What?  In a big city there’s bound to be a few men and women who can’t live without listening to themselves, and who prefer drinking out of pipes they don’t own both ends of.  They inhabit flats and hotels all the year round.  They say it saves ’em trouble.  Anyway, it gives ’em more time to make trouble for their neighbours.  We call ’em Serviles locally.  And they are apt to be tuberculous.’

‘Just so!’ said the man called Mulligan.  Transportation is Civilisation.  Democracy is Disease.  I’ve proved it by the blood-test, every time.’

‘Mulligan’s our Health Officer, and a one-idea man,’ said the Mayor, laughing.  ’But it’s true that most Serviles haven’t much control.  They will talk; and when people take to talking as a business, anything may arrive—­mayn’t it, De Forest?’

‘Anything—­except the facts of the case,’ said De Forest, laughing.

‘I’ll give you those in a minute,’ said the Mayor.  ’Our Serviles got to talking—­first in their houses and then on the streets, telling men and women how to manage their own affairs. (You can’t teach a Servile not to finger his neighbour’s soul.) That’s invasion of privacy, of course, but in Chicago we’ll suffer anything sooner than make Crowds.  Nobody took much notice, and so I let ’em alone.  My fault!  I was warned there would be trouble, but there hasn’t been a Crowd or murder in Illinois for nineteen years.’