“It was,” X pursued, evenly, “a comestible article once rather prominently advertised in the dailies, but which never, somehow, gained the favour of the public.  The enterprise fizzled out, as you say here.  Parcels of their stock could be picked up at auctions at considerably less than a penny a pound.  The group bought some of it, and an agency for Stone’s Dried Soup was started on the top floor.  A perfectly respectable business.  The stuff, a yellow powder of extremely unappetizing aspect, was put up in large square tins, of which six went to a case.  If anybody ever came to give an order, it was, of course, executed.  But the advantage of the powder was this, that things could be concealed in it very conveniently.  Now and then a special case got put on a van and sent off to be exported abroad under the very nose of the policeman on duty at the corner.  You understand?”

“I think I do,” I said, with an expressive nod at the remnants of the bombe melting slowly in the dish.

“Exactly.  But the cases were useful in another way, too.  In the basement, or in the cellar at the back, rather, two printing-presses were established.  A lot of revolutionary literature of the most inflammatory kind was got away from the house in Stone’s Dried Soup cases.  The brother of our anarchist young lady found some occupation there.  He wrote articles, helped to set up type and pull off the sheets, and generally assisted the man in charge, a very able young fellow called Sevrin.

“The guiding spirit of that group was a fanatic of social revolution.  He is dead now.  He was an engraver and etcher of genius.  You must have seen his work.  It is much sought after by certain amateurs now.  He began by being revolutionary in his art, and ended by becoming a revolutionist, after his wife and child had died in want and misery.  He used to say that the bourgeoisie, the smug, overfed lot, had killed them.  That was his real belief.  He still worked at his art and led a double life.  He was tall, gaunt, and swarthy, with a long, brown beard and deep-set eyes.  You must have seen him.  His name was Horne.”

At this I was really startled.  Of course years ago I used to meet Horne about.  He looked like a powerful, rough gipsy, in an old top hat, with a red muffler round his throat and buttoned up in a long, shabby overcoat.  He talked of his art with exaltation, and gave one the impression of being strung up to the verge of insanity.  A small group of connoisseurs appreciated his work.  Who would have thought that this man. . . .  Amazing!  And yet it was not, after all, so difficult to believe.

“As you see,” X went on, “this group was in a position to pursue its work of propaganda, and the other kind of work, too, under very advantageous conditions.  They were all resolute, experienced men of a superior stamp.  And yet we became struck at length by the fact that plans prepared in Hermione Street almost invariably failed.”