he reached the Bank, and then onwards till he reached the
Mile End Road.

As he walked he made plans. When he had drawn his money he would
breakfast at a restaurant, he fixed upon Romanos', eggs and bacon and
sausages, coffee and hot rolls would be the _menu_. Then he fell to
wondering whether Romanos' would be open for breakfast, or whether it
was of the type of restaurant that only serves luncheons and dinners. If
it were, then he could breakfast at the Charing Cross Hotel.

These considerations led him a good distance on his way. Then the Mile
End Road beguiled him, lying straight and foreign looking, and empty in
the sunlight. The Barometer man's weather apparatus must have been at
fault, for in all the sky there was not a cloud, nor the symptom of the
coming of a cloud.

Away down near the docks, a clock over a public house pointed to half
past seven, and he judged it time to return.

He came back. The Mile End Road was still deserted, the city round the
bank was destitute of life, Fleet Street empty.

Pompeii lay not more utterly dead than this weird city of vast business
palaces, and the Strand shewed nothing of life or almost nothing, every
shop was shuttered though now it was close upon nine o'clock.

Something had happened to London, some blight had fallen on the
inhabitants, death seemed everywhere, not seen but hinted at. Stray
recollections of weird stories by H. G. Wells passed through the mind
of Jones. He recalled the city of London when the Martians had done with
it, that city of death, and horror, and sunlight and silence.

Then of a sudden, as he neared the Law Courts, the appalling truth
suddenly suggested itself to him.

He walked up to a policeman on point of duty at a corner, a policeman
who seemed under the mesmerism of the general gloom and blight, a
policeman who might have been the blue concrete core of negation.

"Say, officer," said Jones, "what day's to-day?"

"Sunday," said the policeman.

CHAPTER XXX

A JUST MAN ANGERED

When things are piled one on top of another beyond a certain height,
they generally come down with a crash.

That one word "Sunday" was the last straw for Jones, sweeping away
breakfast, bank and everything; coming on top of the events of the last
twenty-four hours, it brought his mental complacency to ruin, ruin from
which shot blazing jets of wrath.

Red rage filled him. He had been made game of, every man and everything
was against him. Well,