De Forest plugged him wrathfully, and poured out the story of our doings for the last twenty-four hours on the top-note.

‘And they do it all in public,’ he concluded.  ’You can’t stop ’em.  The more public, the better they are pleased.  They’ll talk for hours—­like you!  Now you can come in again!’

‘Do you really mean they know how to vote?’ said Vincent.  ’Can they act it?’

’Act?  It’s their life to ’em!  And you never saw such faces!  Scarred like volcanoes.  Envy, hatred, and malice in plain sight.  Wonderfully flexible voices.  They weep, too.’

‘Aloud?  In public?’

’I guarantee.  Not a spark of shame or reticence in the entire installation.  It’s the chance of your career.’

’D’you say you’ve brought their voting props along—­those papers and ballot-box things?’

’No, confound you!  I’m not a luggage-lifter.  Apply direct to the Mayor of Chicago.  He’ll forward you everything.  Well?’

’Wait a minute.  Did Chicago want to kill ’em?  That ’ud look well on the Communicators.’

’Yes!  They were only rescued with difficulty from a howling mob—­if you know what that is.’

‘But I don’t,’ answered the Great Vincent simply.

’Well then, they’ll tell you themselves.  They can make speeches hours long.’

‘How many are there?’

’By the time we ship ’em all over they’ll be perhaps a hundred, counting children.  An old world in miniature.  Can’t you see it?’

‘M-yes; but I’ve got to pay for it if it’s a blow-out, dear man.’

’They can sing the old war songs in the streets.  They can get word-drunk, and make crowds, and invade privacy in the genuine old-fashioned way; and they’ll do the voting trick as often as you ask ‘em a question.’

‘Too good!’ said Vincent.

’You unbelieving Jew!  I’ve got a dozen head aboard here.  I’ll put you through direct.  Sample ’em yourself.’

He lifted the switch and we listened.  Our passengers on the lower deck at once, but not less than five at a time, explained themselves to Vincent.  They had been taken from the bosom of their families, stripped of their possessions, given food without finger-bowls, and cast into captivity in a noisome dungeon.

‘But look here,’ said Arnott aghast; ’they’re saying what isn’t true.  My lower deck isn’t noisome, and I saw to the finger-bowls myself.’

‘My people talk like that sometimes in Little Russia,’ said Dragomiroff.  ‘We reason with them.  We never kill.  No!’

‘But it’s not true,’ Arnott insisted.  ’What can you do with people who don’t tell facts?  They’re mad!’

‘Hsh!’ said Pirolo, his hand to his ear.  ’It is such a little time since all the Planet told lies.’

We heard Vincent silkily sympathetic.  Would they, he asked, repeat their assertions in public—­before a vast public?  Only let Vincent give them a chance, and the Planet, they vowed, should ring with their wrongs.  Their aim in life—­two women and a man explained it together—­was to reform the world.  Oddly enough, this also had been Vincent’s life-dream.  He offered them an arena in which to explain, and by their living example to raise the Planet to loftier levels.  He was eloquent on the moral uplift of a simple, old-world life presented in its entirety to a deboshed civilisation.