‘But we can assimilate,’ the Buffalo woman charged on.

‘Now you have done it!’ I whispered to the old lady as the blessed word ‘assimilation’ woke up all the old arguments for and against.

There was not a dull moment in that dinner for me—­nor afterwards when the boys and girls at the piano played the rag-time tunes of their own land, while their elders, inexhaustibly interested, replunged into the discussion of that land’s future, till there was talk of coon-can.  When all the company had been set to tables Zigler led me into his book-lined study, where I noticed he kept his golf-clubs, and spoke simply as a child, gravely as a bishop, of the years that were past since our last meeting.

‘That’s about all, I guess—­up to date,’ he said when he had unrolled the bright map of his fortunes across three continents.  ‘Bein’ rich suits me.  So does your country, sir.  My own country?  You heard what that Detroit man said at dinner.  “A Government of the alien, by the alien, for the alien.”  Mother’s right, too.  Lincoln killed us.  From the highest motives—­but he killed us.  Oh, say, that reminds me.  ’J’ever kill a man from the highest motives?’

‘Not from any motive—­as far as I remember.’

’Well, I have.  It don’t weigh on my mind any, but it was interesting.  Life is interesting for a rich—­for any—­man in England.  Ya-as!  Life in England is like settin’ in the front row at the theatre and never knowin’ when the whole blame drama won’t spill itself into your lap.  I didn’t always know that.  I lie abed now, and I blush to think of some of the breaks I made in South Africa.  About the British.  Not your official method of doin’ business.  But the Spirit.  I was ’way, ’way off on the Spirit.  Are you acquainted with any other country where you’d have to kill a man or two to get at the National Spirit?’

‘Well,’ I answered, ’next to marrying one of its women, killing one of its men makes for pretty close intimacy with any country.  I take it you killed a British citizen.’

’Why, no.  Our syndicate confined its operations to aliens—­dam-fool aliens....  ’J’ever know an English lord called Lundie[5]?  Looks like a frame-food and soap advertisement.  I imagine he was in your Supreme Court before he came into his lordship.’

[Footnote 5:  ‘The Puzzler’:  Actions and Reactions.]

’He is a lawyer—­what we call a Law Lord—­a Judge of Appeal—­not a real hereditary lord.’

‘That’s as much beyond me as this!’ Zigler slapped a fat Debrett on the table.  ‘But I presoom this unreal Law Lord Lundie is kind o’ real in his decisions?  I judged so.  And—­one more question.  ’Ever meet a man called Walen?’

‘D’you mean Burton-Walen, the editor of—?’ I mentioned the journal.

’That’s him.  ’Looks like a tough, talks like a Maxim, and trains with kings.’

‘He does,’ I said.  ’Burton-Walen knows all the crowned heads of Europe intimately.  It’s his hobby.’