But Mr. Macdonald wasn't coming, so we left him.
'Be here by three o'clock,' he said, 'not a minute later, and I'll drive you back.'
As we left the gate I noticed that the sentries looked rather puzzled at Gerald and myself.
'I couldn't say anything in there,' Gerald began, when we'd got out into the crowded street; 'you never know who may be listening. We're going to have a revolution, and I'm rather mixed up in it. You saw that little plain-clothes chap at the gate, he's one of the President's secret police, and has been shadowing me for the last four days.'
I had seen him, the one who'd been so startled when I went in.
'Don't you carry a revolver or anything?' I asked nervously.
'My dear old Billums, I've never thought of it.'
I bothered him to get one in case anything happened.
'All right, old chap, I'll think about it.'
There was too great a crush in the narrow streets to do much talking, and we had a lot of trouble to push our way along. There were quite a lot of people wearing the horizontal black and green stripes in these streets, and you could tell they were strangers by their weird-looking clothes and by the way they flocked along with their eyes and mouths open.