“Where is Mr. Ilam?” Carpentaria asked again.
The Soudanese smiled.
They stood at the foot of the giant wheel, all of whose sixty cars were in darkness save one, and this car was at the bottom, and its door was open. Near the door stood a single official in the uniform of the City.
Carpentaria began to be puzzled.
“Mr. Ilam at the top?” he asked the official.
“I think so, sir,” said the official, after hesitating.
Carpentaria went into the car. The Soudanese shut the sliding door, remaining himself outside. The official blew a whistle, and the giant wheel began slowly to revolve with a terrific vibration and straining of chains and rods. The car was designed to hold sixty people—when the giant wheel was in full work it earned a hundred and eighty pounds per revolution—and Carpentaria felt lonely in it. “Is this some trap?” his thoughts ran; and he said to himself that he didn’t care whether it was a trap or not. As the car rose in the sky he had a superb view of the fireworks, which were now in full career—an immense and glittering tapestry of changing coloured flame, reflected hue for hue and tint for tint on the calm surface of the Thames beneath. And high above the pyrotechnics lightning was beginning to play. The day had been hot, even close, and it had been a pleasing surprise to the money-takers of the City that rain had not fallen.
At last the wheel shuddered, shook, and stopped. The car was at the summit, three hundred and forty feet above the level of the earth. A figure appeared on the flying platform outside the car. The door was opened, and Ilam entered.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Carpentaria demanded of him, standing up suddenly, and instinctively feeling the handle of his revolver with his right hand.
“It means that I wish to talk to you in private,” answered Ham, emphasizing the last two words; “and there seems to me to be no place particularly private down below now,” he added.