“Never,” replied Bleak, kindling a magnifico of remarkably rich, mild flavor.

“That is as I expected,” rejoined Quimbleton.  “We have campaigned incognito, partly by choice and partly (let me be candid) by necessity.  But the time is come when we shall have to appear in the open.  The last great struggle is on, and it can no longer be conducted in the dark.  In the course of my remarks I may be tempted to forget our present perils.  I beg of you, if you hear any sounds that seem suspicious, to notify me instantly.”

“Pardon me,” said Bleak, a little uneasily; “it was my intention to catch the 9.30 train for Mandrake Park.”

The fantastic cascade of false white hair wagged gravely in the dusk.

“My dear sir,” said Quimbleton solemnly, “I fancy you are to be gratified by a far higher destiny than catching the 9.30.  Do me the honor of filling your glass.  But be careful not to clink the decanter against the tumbler.  There is every probability that vigilant ears are on the alert.”

There was a brief silence, and Bleak wondered (a trifle wildly) if he were dreaming.  The cigar on the opposite side of the little table glowed rosily several times, and then Quimbleton’s voice resumed, in a deep undertone.

“It is necessary to tell you,” he said, “that the Corporation was founded a number of years ago, long before the events of the fatal year 1919 and the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  The incident of this afternoon may have caused you to think that what is vulgarly called booze is the chief preoccupation of our society.  That is not so.  We were organized at first simply to bring merriment and good cheer into the lives of those who have found the vexations of modern life too trying.  In our early days we carried on an excellent (though unsystematic) guerilla warfare against human suffering.

“In this (let me admit it frankly) we were to a great degree selfish.  As you are aware, the essence of humor is surprise:  we found a delicious humor in our campaign of surprising woebegone humanity in moments of crisis.  For instance, we used to picket the railway terminals to console commuters who had just missed their trains.  We found it uproariously funny to approach a perspiring suburbanite, who had missed the train (let us say) to Mandrake Park, and to press upon him, with the compliments of the Corporation, some consolatory souvenir—­a box of cigars, perhaps, or a basket of rare fruit.  Housewives, groaning over their endless routine of bathing the baby, ordering the meals, sweeping the floors and so on, would be amazed by the sudden appearance of one of our deputies, in the service uniform of gray and silver, equipped with vacuum cleaner and electric baby-washing machine, to take over the domestic chores for one day.  The troubles of lovers were under our special care.  We saw how much anguish is caused by the passion of jealousy.  Many an engaged damsel, tempted to mild escapade in some perfumed