which might well have meant pitching the
other man out of the flying ship.

"I am an atheist," he said, in a stifled voice. "I have always been an
atheist. I am still an atheist." Then, addressing the other's indolent
and indifferent back, he cried: "In God's name what do you mean?"

And the other answered without turning round:

"I mean nothing in God's name."

Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously into his
seat.

The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge idly as
an angler stares down at a stream.

"The truth is that we never thought that you could have been caught,"
he said; "we counted on you as the one red-hot revolutionary left in
the world. But, of course, these men like MacIan are awfully clever,
especially when they pretend to be stupid."

Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: "What have I got to
do with MacIan? I believe all I ever believed, and disbelieve all I
ever disbelieved. What does all this mean, and what do you want with me
here?"

Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of the
car and faced him.

"I have brought you here," he answered, "to take part in the last war of
the world."

"The last war!" repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little
touchy about such a dogma; "how do you know it will be the last?"

The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:

"It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it
will destroy it."

"What do you mean?"

"I only mean what you mean," answered the unknown in a temperate voice.
"What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when
you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the
air?"

"Still I do not see," said Turnbull, stubbornly.

"You will soon," said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron
handle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and dived
almost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they
swept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only
too well. The last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven
was dark; the lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up
the base of the building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral,
and he saw that on the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but
the cross was stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared to
look down into the stree