ered by a road confined to pedestrians, cyclists and
ordinary cars on which no vehicle was allowed to move at more than
twelve miles an hour.

Beyond these great tracks lay an immense plain of house-roofs, with
short towers here and there marking public buildings, from the Caterham
district on the left to Croydon in front, all clear and bright in
smokeless air; and far away to the west and north showed the low
suburban hills against the April sky.

There was surprisingly little sound, considering the pressure of the
population; and, with the exception of the buzz of the steel rails as a
train fled north or south, and the occasional sweet chord of the great
motors as they neared or left the junction, there was little to be heard
in this study except a smooth, soothing murmur that filled the air like
the murmur of bees in a garden.

Oliver loved every hint of human life--all busy sights and sounds--and
was listening now, smiling faintly to himself as he stared out into the
clear air. Then he set his lips, laid his fingers on the keys once more,
and went on speech-constructing.

* * * * *

He was very fortunate in the situation of his house. It stood in an
angle of one of those huge spider-webs with which the country was
covered, and for his purposes was all that he could expect. It was close
enough to London to be extremely cheap, for all wealthy persons had
retired at least a hundred miles from the throbbing heart of England;
and yet it was as quiet as he could wish. He was within ten minutes of
Westminster on the one side, and twenty minutes of the sea on the other,
and his constituency lay before him like a raised map. Further, since
the great London termini were but ten minutes away, there were at his
disposal the First Trunk lines to every big town in England. For a
politician of no great means, who was asked to speak at Edinburgh on one
evening and in Marseilles on the next, he was as well placed as any man
in Europe.

He was a pleasant-looking man, not much over thirty years old; black
wire-haired, clean-shaven, thin, virile, magnetic, blue-eyed and
white-skinned; and he appeared this day extremely content with himself
and the world. His lips moved slightly as he worked, his eyes enlarged
and diminished with excitement, and more than once he paused and stared
out again, smiling and flushed.

Then a door opened; a middle-aged man came nervously in with a bundle of
papers, laid them down on the table without