“Praise louder!” whispered the intimate voice beside me. “Why do you not praise when the others do?”
And then I realized that the funnel was speaking to me! Nobody else had heard, nobody else was meant to hear. I knew that the funnels had a tele-photophonic attachment whereby one could see as well as hear. Somewhere, then, the person who had spoken to me that morning was watching and playing with me. For an instant I felt caught in a trap.
“You do not seem to be an admirer of Boss Lembken,” said a voice upon my other side; and I swung around to see a little, sallow man in blue, with a plank badge on his shoulder, indicating that he was a carpenter. “I see you are a stranger,” he continued, with a glance at my gray uniform. “What do you think of London?”
“I have not seen much of it as yet,” I answered, remembering David’s warning.
“Ah, you are diplomatic,” he returned suavely. “One has to be diplomatic in these days, do you not think? You are of the same opinion as many of us, only you lack the courage to say it, that certain features of our civilization are over-developed. Now let us take Doctor Sanson, for instance—do you not consider that he is pushing his prosecution of morons to undue lengths? Has he not, in other words, a mania about them?”
“I think,” I answered, hotly, “that a man whose chief amusement consists in torturing his fellow-men needs to have his own mentality investigated.”
“A worthy sentiment,” answered the little man, nodding his head briskly. “In short, you are with us on that subject. And as for Lembken?”
“I know nothing of him,” I answered shortly.
“No, of course not. You are wise not to commit yourself,” said the little man eagerly. “One must not pass judgment without investigation. But still, our democracy has, in some respects, retained the features of the old despotisms, do you not think? And then, do you consider that the people are really omnipotent?”
He cocked his head as he spoke, and he had the objectionable habit of thrusting his face forward, so that he had been forcing me, step by step, around the circumference of a circle.