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They swarmed thicker and thicker to the right, gesticulating it might be they were shouting, but of that the picture told nothing. They and the windwheels passed slowly and steadily across the field of the mirror. "Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edge crept into view and gathered Graham's attention.
He went to the room of the Ward Leaders to ask for news of the fight for the stages and there was no one there. After a time he came back to her. His face had changed. It had dawned upon him that the struggle was perhaps more than half over, that Ostrog was holding his own, that the arrival of the aeroplanes would mean a panic that might leave him helpless.
"Yet ." He thought for an instant. "There is that other thing the Crowd, the great mass of poor men. Will that die out? That will not die out. And it suffers, its suffering is a force that even you " Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly than before. "Don't you trouble about these things," he said. "Everything will be settled in a few days now.
In another moment he had thrust Ostrog back, and he was on one foot, his hand gripping Ostrog's throat, and Ostrog's hands clutching the silk about his neck. But now men were coming towards them from the dais men whose intentions he misunderstood.
They had scarcely advanced ten paces from the curtain before a little panel to the left of the Atlas rolled up, and Ostrog, accompanied by Lincoln and followed by two black and yellow clad negroes, appeared crossing the remote corner of the hall, towards a second panel that was raised and open. "Ostrog," shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice the little party turned astonished.
It drooped across the space and rose and passed overhead, rising to clear the mass of the Council House, a filmy translucent shape with the solitary aeronaut peering down through its ribs. It vanished beyond the skyline of the ruins. Graham transferred his attention to Ostrog. He was signalling with his hands, and his attendants busy breaking down the wall beside him.
But ever and again during the night's expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, "Galloop, Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha Yap! Hear a live paper yelp!" of its chief rival. Repeated, too, everywhere, were such crèches as the one he now entered.
He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture. "As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you're telling that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What's your game? And besides, we've been talking of the Sleeper." Graham stood up. "Listen," he said. "I am the Sleeper."
"Oh! not those!" said Ostrog. "But for the most part they go to their death. Vice and pleasure! They have no children. That sort of stuff will die out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning back. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasure seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve the race!" "Pleasant extinction," said Graham.
And to fall over a dead body suddenly in the dark!" His wheezy breathing could be heard. "Ostrog!" said Graham. "The greatest Boss the world has ever seen," said the voice. Graham ransacked his mind. "The Council has few friends among the people," he hazarded. "Few friends. And poor ones at that. They've had their time. Eh! They should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election.
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