You have a heavy iron door.
You cannot pass it without submitting to the humiliation of calling
yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel instruments
which make the place, if I may say so, more impressive than homelike.
May I ask why, after taking all this trouble to barricade yourselves in
the bowels of the earth, you then parade your whole secret by talking
about anarchism to every silly woman in Saffron Park?"

Gregory smiled.

"The answer is simple," he said. "I told you I was a serious anarchist,
and you did not believe me. Nor do they believe me. Unless I took them
into this infernal room they would not believe me."

Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory went
on.

"The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I
became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable
disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our
anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and Priests of Prey. I
certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible old
men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When on my
first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in
a voice of thunder, 'Down! down! presumptuous human reason!' they found
out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once.
Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much
intelligence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried
being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope,
enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who,
like Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all
that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved
it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a man calling
for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is the Law.' Well,
well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went
in despair to the President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the
greatest man in Europe."

"What is his name?" asked Syme.

"You would not know it," answered Gregory. "That is his greatness.
Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard of, and they
were heard of. He puts all his genius into not being heard of, and he
is not heard of. But you cannot be for five minutes in the room with him
without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have bee