London looked strange this morning, he thought.  Here beneath him was the common, parched somewhat with the intense heat of the previous week, stretching for perhaps half-a-mile—­tumbled ground, smooth stretches of turf, and the heads of heavy trees up to the first house-roofs, set, too, it seemed, in bowers of foliage.  Then beyond that began the serried array, line beyond line, broken in one spot by the gleam of a river-reach, and then on again fading beyond eyesight.  But what surprised him was the density of the air; it was now, as old books related it had been in the days of smoke.  There was no freshness, no translucence of morning atmosphere; it was impossible to point in any one direction to the source of this veiling gloom, for on all sides it was the same.  Even the sky overhead lacked its blue; it appeared painted with a muddy brush, and the sun shewed the same faint tinge of red.  Yes, it was like that, he said wearily to himself—­like a second-rate sketch; there was no sense of mystery as of a veiled city, but rather unreality.  The shadows seemed lacking in definiteness, the outlines and grouping in coherence.  A storm was wanted, he reflected; or even, it might be, one more earthquake on the other side of the world would, in wonderful illustration of the globe’s unity, relieve the pressure on this side.  Well, well; the journey would be worth taking even for the interest of observing climatic changes; but it would be terribly hot, he mused, by the time the south of France was reached.

Then his thoughts leaped back to their own gnawing misery.

* * * * *

It was another ten minutes before he saw the scarlet Government motor, with awnings out, slide up the road from the direction of Fulham; and yet five minutes more before the three men appeared with their servants behind them—­Maxwell, Snowford and Cartwright, all alike, as was Oliver, in white duck from head to foot.

They did not speak one word of their business, for the officials were going to and fro, and it was advisable to guard against even the smallest possibility of betrayal.  The guard had been told that the volor was required for a three days’ journey, that provisions were to be taken in for that period, and that the first point towards which the course was to lie was the centre of the South Downs.  There would be no stopping for at least a day and a night.

Further instructions had reached them from the President on the previous morning, by which time He had completed His visitation, and received the assent of the Emergency Councils of the world.  This Snowford commented upon in an undertone, and added a word or two as to details, as the four stood together looking out over the city.