‘If you say so,’ said Pirolo thoughtfully, ’I can guarantee that they will become extinct in process of time, quite happily.  What is their birth-rate now?’

’Go down and ask ’em,’ said De Forest.

‘I think they might become nervous and tear me to bits,’ the philosopher of Foggia replied.

‘Not really?  Well?’

‘Open the bilge-doors,’ said Takahira with a downward jerk of the thumb.

’Scarcely—­after all the trouble we’ve taken to save ’em,’ said De Forest.

‘Try London,’ Arnott suggested.  ’You could turn Satan himself loose there, and they’d only ask him to dinner.’

‘Good man!  You’ve given me an idea.  Vincent!  Oh, Vincent!’ He threw the General Communicator open so that we could all hear, and in a few minutes the chart-room filled with the rich, fruity voice of Leopold Vincent, who has purveyed all London her choicest amusements for the last thirty years.  We answered with expectant grins, as though we were actually in the stalls of, say, the Combination on a first night.

‘We’ve picked up something in your line,’ De Forest began.

’That’s good, dear man.  If it’s old enough.  There’s nothing to beat the old things for business purposes.  Have you seen London, Chatham, and Dover at Earl’s Court?  No?  I thought I missed you there.  Immense!  I’ve had the real steam locomotive engines built from the old designs and the iron rails cast specially by hand.  Cloth cushions in the carriages, too!  Immense!  And paper railway tickets.  And Polly Milton.’

‘Polly Milton back again!’ said Arnott rapturously.  ’Book me two stalls for to-morrow night.  What’s she singing now, bless her?’

’The old songs.  Nothing comes up to the old touch.  Listen to this, dear men.’  Vincent carolled with flourishes: 

     Oh, cruel lamps of London,
     If tears your light could drown,
     Your victims’ eyes would weep them,
     Oh, lights of London Town!

‘Then they weep.’

‘You see?’ Pirolo waved his hands at us.  ’The old world always weeped when it saw crowds together.  It did not know why, but it weeped.  We know why, but we do not weep, except when we pay to be made to by fat, wicked old Vincent.’

‘Old, yourself!’ Vincent laughed.  ’I’m a public benefactor, I keep the world soft and united.’

‘And I’m De Forest of the Board,’ said De Forest acidly, ’trying to get a little business done.  As I was saying, I’ve picked up a few people in Chicago.’

‘I cut out.  Chicago is—­’

‘Do listen!  They’re perfectly unique.’

’Do they build houses of baked mudblocks while you wait—­eh?  That’s an old contact.’

‘They’re an untouched primitive community, with all the old ideas.’

’Sewing-machines and maypole-dances?  Cooking on coal-gas stoves, lighting pipes with matches, and driving horses?  Gerolstein tried that last year.  An absolute blow-out!’