In the presence of a Government official, a representative of His Majesty—Colonel Patrick Moore, of the Irish Guards, A.D.C.—the Cardinal Archbishop, and a few private friends, I watched the elmwood shell, containing Gideon Mendoza Morse, placed in its marble tomb.
It was his wish, to be buried there in his fantastic City, and no one said him nay. Well, the body lies in its place, two hundred weeping Chinamen are returning to the Flowery Land, wealthy beyond their utmost hopes, and in a few months the City in the Clouds will dissolve and disappear.
The rich treasures are coming to Stax, my castle in Norfolk—such as are not bequeathed, by Morse's munificence, to the museums of England and the galleries at Brazil.
Soon the immense plateau will be England's aerial terminus for the mail ships from all parts of the world.
While Gideon Morse lived it was impossible to publish the truth. It is to appear now, at last, and I simply want to tie a few loose ends, and to bring down the curtain, leaving nothing unexplained.
First of all let me say that the general public knew nothing at all of the horrors in which I was so intimately concerned.
Juanita and I were married very quietly in Westminster Cathedral soon after Midwinter went to his account. The enormous fortune that she brought me, supplementing my own very considerable means, operated in the natural way. Other journals were added to the Evening Special, and we started a great campaign for the sweetening of ordinary life, and not unsuccessfully, as every one knows.
They made me a baron, and four years afterwards, Earl of Stax. As for my father-in-law, he refused to budge from the City in the Clouds.
I don't mean that he didn't make appearances in society, but he loved to get back to his fantastic haven, from whence, like a magician, he showered benefits upon London.
Arthur Winstanley, as everybody knows, is Under-Secretary for India and the most rising politician of our day.