ged abruptly at his
white moustache and broke out--

"No, by George! I won't. If these gentlemen are really in a mess with a
lot of low wreckers like that, I'll see them through it. I have fought
for France, and it is hard if I can't fight for civilization."

Dr. Bull took off his hat and waved it, cheering as at a public meeting.

"Don't make too much noise," said Inspector Ratcliffe, "Sunday may hear
you."

"Sunday!" cried Bull, and dropped his hat.

"Yes," retorted Ratcliffe, "he may be with them."

"With whom?" asked Syme.

"With the people out of that train," said the other.

"What you say seems utterly wild," began Syme. "Why, as a matter of
fact--But, my God," he cried out suddenly, like a man who sees an
explosion a long way off, "by God! if this is true the whole bally lot
of us on the Anarchist Council were against anarchy! Every born man was
a detective except the President and his personal secretary. What can it
mean?"

"Mean!" said the new policeman with incredible violence. "It means that
we are struck dead! Don't you know Sunday? Don't you know that his jokes
are always so big and simple that one has never thought of them? Can you
think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should put all his
powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and then take care that it was
not supreme? I tell you he has bought every trust, he has captured every
cable, he has control of every railway line--especially of that railway
line!" and he pointed a shaking finger towards the small wayside
station. "The whole movement was controlled by him; half the world was
ready to rise for him. But there were just five people, perhaps, who
would have resisted him... and the old devil put them on the Supreme
Council, to waste their time in watching each other. Idiots that we are,
he planned the whole of our idiocies! Sunday knew that the Professor
would chase Syme through London, and that Syme would fight me in France.
And he was combining great masses of capital, and seizing great lines
of telegraphy, while we five idiots were running after each other like a
lot of confounded babies playing blind man's buff."

"Well?" asked Syme with a sort of steadiness.

"Well," replied the other with sudden serenity, "he has found us playing
blind man's buff today in a field of great rustic beauty and extreme
solitude. He has probably captured the world; it only remains to him to
capture this field and all the fools in it. And si