Twice the car stopped; each time it moved on again after a hoot or two, and at last drew up at the platform whence it had started, although a hundred yards further out.

Ah! there was no doubt that something had happened!  The instant he opened the door a great roar met his ears, and as he sprang on to the platform and looked up at the end of the station, he began to understand.

* * * * *

From right to left of the huge interior, across the platforms, swelling every instant, surged an enormous swaying, roaring crowd.  The flight of steps, twenty yards broad, used only in cases of emergency, resembled a gigantic black cataract nearly two hundred feet in height.  Each car as it drew up discharged more and more men and women, who ran like ants towards the assembly of their fellows.  The noise was indescribable, the shouting of men, the screaming of women, the clang and hoot of the huge machines, and three or four times the brazen cry of a trumpet, as an emergency door was flung open overhead, and a small swirl of crowd poured through it towards the streets beyond.  But after one look Percy looked no more at the people; for there, high up beneath the clock, on the Government signal board, flared out monstrous letters of fire, telling in Esperanto and English, the message for which England had grown sick.  He read it a dozen times before he moved, staring, as at a supernatural sight which might denote the triumph of either heaven or hell.

“EASTERN CONVENTION DISPERSED.

PEACE, NOT WAR.

UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD ESTABLISHED.

FELSENBURGH IN LONDON TO-NIGHT.”

* * * * *

III

It was not until nearly two hours later that Percy was standing at the house beyond the Junction.

He bad argued, expostulated, threatened, but the officials were like men possessed.  Half of them had disappeared in the rush to the City, for it had leaked out, in spite of the Government’s precautions, that Paul’s House, known once as St. Paul’s Cathedral, was to be the scene of Felsenburgh’s reception.  The others seemed demented; one man on the platform had dropped dead from nervous exhaustion, but no one appeared to care; and the body lay huddled beneath a seat.  Again and again Percy had been swept away by a rush, as he struggled from platform to platform in his search for a car that would take him to Croydon.  It seemed that there was none to be had, and the useless carriages collected like drift-wood between the platforms, as others whirled up from the country bringing loads of frantic, delirious men, who vanished like smoke from the white rubber-boards.  The platforms were continually crowded, and as continually emptied, and it was not until half-an-hour before midnight that the block began to move outwards again.

Well, he was here at last, dishevelled, hatless and exhausted, looking up at the dark windows.