Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of the car and faced him.
“I have brought you here,” he answered, “to take part in the last war of the world.”
“The last war!” repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little touchy about such a dogma; “how do you know it will be the last?”
The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
“It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it will destroy it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I only mean what you mean,” answered the unknown in a temperate voice. “What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the air?”
“Still I do not see,” said Turnbull, stubbornly.
“You will soon,” said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron handle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and dived almost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they swept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only too well. The last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven was dark; the lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up the base of the building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral, and he saw that on the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but the cross was stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared to look down into the streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar and tossing passions.
“We arrive at a happy moment,” said the man steering the ship. “The insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit the cross. Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturally regard it as a happy omen.”