“Everything!” Thirteen cut in with arrogant assertiveness; “all we’ve been waiting for, hoping for, praying for—the end of the ruling classes, extinction of the accursed aristocrats, subjugation of the thrice-damned bourgeois, the triumph of the proletariat, all at a single stroke, swift, subtle, and sure! Freedom for Ireland, freedom for India, freedom for England, the speedy spreading of that red dawn which lights the Russian skies to-day, till all the wide world basks in its warm radiance and acclaims us, comrades, its redeemers!”
“Lieber Gott!” the German breathed. “Colossal!”
“’Ear, ’ear!” the Englishman applauded, perfunctory and skeptical. “Bli’me if you didn’t mike me forget where I was—’ad me thinking I was in ’Yde Park, you did, listening to a bloody horator on a box.”
“You may laugh,” Thirteen replied with a sour glance; “but when you have heard, you will not laugh. I am not boasting—I am telling you.”
“Not a great deal,” the Irishman suggested. “Your mouth is full of sounds and fury, but till you tell us more you’ll have told us nothing.”
The face of Thirteen grew darker still, and for a moment he seemed to meditate an angry retort; but he thought better of it, contenting himself with an impatient movement and a mutter: “All in good time; Number One is not here yet.”
“W’y wyste time w’itin’ for ’im?” demanded the Englishman. “’E’s no good, ’e’s done.”
Thirteen’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”
“’E’s done, Number One is—finished, counted out, napoo! ’E’s ’ad ’is d’y, and a pretty mess ’e’s mide of it—and it’s ’igh time, I say, for ’im to step down and let a better man tike ’old.”
Growls in chorus endorsed this declaration of mutiny; but suddenly were stilled by a voice, sonorous and calm, from outside the circle: