anting,
reeling men. '_You've_ cut out of system. Well?'

'Tell the steward to send down drinks, please,' Arnott whispered to an
orderly at his side.

'Good!' said the Mayor, smacking his dry lips. 'Now I suppose we can
take it, De Forest, that henceforward the Board will administer
us direct?'

'Not if the Board can avoid it,' De Forest laughed. 'The A.B.C. is
responsible for the planetary traffic only.'

'_And all that that implies_.' The big Four who ran Chicago chanted
their Magna Charta like children at school.

'Well, get on,' said De Forest wearily. 'What is your silly trouble
anyway?'

'Too much dam' Democracy,' said the Mayor, laying his hand on De
Forest's knee.

'So? I thought Illinois had had her dose of that.'

'She has. That's why. Blut, what did you do with our prisoners last
night?'

'Locked 'em in the water-tower to prevent the women killing 'em,' the
Chief of Police replied. 'I'm too blind to move just yet, but--'

'Arnott, send some of your people, please, and fetch 'em along,' said De
Forest.

'They're triple-circuited,' the Mayor called. 'You'll have to blow out
three fuses.' He turned to De Forest, his large outline just visible in
the paling darkness. 'I hate to throw any more work on the Board. I'm an
administrator myself, but we've had a little fuss with our Serviles.
What? In a big city there's bound to be a few men and women who can't
live without listening to themselves, and who prefer drinking out of
pipes they don't own both ends of. They inhabit flats and hotels all the
year round. They say it saves 'em trouble. Anyway, it gives 'em more
time to make trouble for their neighbours. We call 'em Serviles locally.
And they are apt to be tuberculous.'

'Just so!' said the man called Mulligan. Transportation is Civilisation.
Democracy is Disease. I've proved it by the blood-test, every time.'

'Mulligan's our Health Officer, and a one-idea man,' said the Mayor,
laughing. 'But it's true that most Serviles haven't much control. They
_will_ talk; and when people take to talking as a business, anything may
arrive--mayn't it, De Forest?'

'Anything--except the facts of the case,' said De Forest, laughing.

'I'll give you those in a minute,' said the Mayor. 'Our Serviles got to
talking--first in their houses and then on the streets, telling men and
women how to manage their own affairs. (You can't teach a Servile not to
finger his neighbour's soul.) That's invasion of privacy, of co