etter for me to do
it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with
a knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French
President and wriggle it round."

"You are wrong," said the Secretary, drawing his black brows together.
"The knife was merely the expression of the old personal quarrel with
a personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our best tool, but our best
symbol. It is as perfect a symbol of us as is incense of the prayers of
the Christians. It expands; it only destroys because it broadens; even
so, thought only destroys because it broadens. A man's brain is a bomb,"
he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking his
own skull with violence. "My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It
must expand! It must expand! A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up
the universe."

"I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the Marquis.
"I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one
yesterday in bed."

"No, if the only end of the thing is nothing," said Dr. Bull with his
sphinx-like smile, "it hardly seems worth doing."

The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes.

"Every man knows in his heart," he said, "that nothing is worth doing."

There was a singular silence, and then the Secretary said--

"We are wandering, however, from the point. The only question is how
Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take it we should all agree with
the original notion of a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, I should
suggest that tomorrow morning he should go first of all to--"

The speech was broken off short under a vast shadow. President Sunday
had risen to his feet, seeming to fill the sky above them.

"Before we discuss that," he said in a small, quiet voice, "let us go
into a private room. I have something very particular to say."

Syme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had come
at last, the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before he could
hear the policeman idly stir and stamp, for the morning, though bright,
was cold.

A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial
tune. Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before the battle.
He found himself filled with a supernatural courage that came from
nowhere. That jingling music seemed full of the vivacity, the vulgarity,
and the irrational valour of the poor, who in all those unclean streets
were all clinging t