Some more officers had ridden up.  Two were already in the car.  Soon it vanished in a cloud of dust on its way back.  Julia, Selingman, Aaron and Maraton were left in the road, along which the soldiers were still marching.  They started out to walk.  Now and then a motor-car rattled by, full of soldiers, but for the most part the streets were almost empty.  No one spoke to them or attempted to molest them in any way.  As they drew nearer London, however, the streets became more and more crowded.  Men in the middle of the road were addressing little knots of listeners.  There was a complete row of shops, the plate-glass windows of which had been knocked in and the contents raided.  They pushed steadily onwards.  Here and there, little groups of loiterers assumed a threatening aspect.  They came across the dead body of a man lying upon the pavement.  No one seemed to mind.  Very few of the passers-by even glanced at him.  Selingman shivered.

“Ghastly!” he muttered.  “This reminds me of the first days of the French troubles.  How quiet the people keep!  They are tired of robbing for money.  It is food they want.  A sandwich just now would be a dangerous possession.”

They reached Algate.  There were still no trains running, and nearly all the houses were tightly shuttered.

“Six weeks!” Maraton murmured to himself as he looked around.  “Could any one believe that this might happen in six weeks!”

“Why not?” Selingman demanded.  “You stop the arteries of life when you stop all communication from centre to centre.  It’s the most merciful way, after all.  Everything will be over the sooner.”

They passed down Threadneedle Street, a wilderness with boards nailed up in front of the great bank windows.  A little further on there was the usual crowd of people, but they were all hanging about, uncertain what to do.  There was no Stock Exchange business being transacted, simply because there were no buyers.  At the Mansion House they found a few ’buses running, and managed to board one which was going westwards.  It set them down in New Oxford Street, not far from Russell Square.  Here there were denser crowds than ever.  The entrance to the square itself was almost blocked.

“What’s going on here?” Maraton asked a loiterer.

They heard a loud, hoarse yell, repeated several times.  The man pointed with his finger.

“They are round.  Maraton’s house,” he answered.  “They have broken in all his windows.  He’s not there or they’d have had him out and flayed him alive.”

A brief silence ensued.  There seemed something ominous in this message, delivered apparently from one typical of his class, a worker out of work, a pipe in his mouth, a generally aimless air about his movements.

“But forgive me,” Selingman remarked, “I am a stranger in this country.  I have been told that Maraton is a friend of the people.”

The man nodded gloomily.