arlor, he began to address them, if indeed it were they
whom he addressed, and not some phantom audience of Princes, Marshals,
Admirals, or trembling sheep-like re emits. It was difficult to hear the
words, hopeless to make out the sense. It was a farrago of nonsense, part
of his own inventing, part (as it seemed) wild and confused reminiscences
of the published speeches of the man he aped, all strung together on some
invisible thread of insane reasoning, delivered with a mad vehemence and
intensity that shook and seemed to rend his feeble frame.

"We must stop him, we must stop him," Mary suddenly whispered. "He'll
kill himself if he goes on like this!"

"I've never been able to stop him," Beaumaroy whispered back. "Hush! If
he hears us speaking he'll be furious, and carry on worse."

The old man's blue eyes fixed themselves on Beaumaroy--of Mary he took no
heed. He pointed at Beaumaroy with his scepter, and from him to the
gleaming gold in Captain Duggle's grave. A streak of coherency, a strand
of mad logic, now ran through his hurtling words; the money was there,
Beaumaroy was to take it--to-day, to-day!--to take it to Morocco, to
raise the tribes, to set Africa aflame. He was to scatter it--broadcast,
broadcast! There was no end to it--don't spare it! "There's millions,
millions of it!" he shouted, and achieved a weird wild majesty in a final
cry, "God with us!"

Then he fell--tumbled back in utter collapse into the recesses of the
great chair. His scepter fell from his nerveless hand and rolled down the
steps of the dais; the impetus it gathered carried it, rolling still,
across the floor to the edge of the open pit; for an instant it lay
poised on the edge, and then fell with a jangle of sound on the carpet of
golden coins that lined Captain Duggle's grave.

"Quick! Get my bag--I left it in the passage," whispered Mary, as she
started forward, up the dais, to the old man's side. "And brandy, if
you've got it," she called after Beaumaroy, as he turned to the door to
do her bidding.

Beaumaroy was gone no more than a minute. When he came back, with the bag
hitched under his arm, a decanter of brandy in one band and a glass in
the other, Mary was leaning over the throne, with her arm round the old
man. His eyes were open, but he was inert and motionless. Beaumaroy
poured out some brandy, and gave it into Mary's free hand. But when Mr.
Saffron saw Beaumaroy by his side, he gave a sudden twist of his body,
wrench