“Let this be done,” he concluded, “and by means of these few tins and bottles which you see before you, in one brief hour the ruling classes will have perished almost to a man, there will be no more government of a tyrannical bourgeoisie to grind down the proletariat, a bloodless revolution will have made England the cradle of the new liberty!”

“Bloodless?” the man on the dais repeated; and even he was seen perceptibly to shudder at the prospect unfolded to the vision of his mind.  “Yes—­but more terrible than the massacre of the Huguenots, more savage than the French Revolution!”

“But I believe,” the inventor commented, “your Excellency said we required the means to deal a ’blow sudden, sharp, merciless—­irresistible’.”

“Surely now,” the Irishman suggested, mockingly—­where a wiser man would have held his tongue—­“you’ll not be sticking at a small matter like wholesale murder if it’s to make us masters of England?”

“Of England?” the German echoed.  “Herr Gott!  Of the world!”

“And you, Excellency, our master,” the inventor added, shrewdly.

A sign at once impatient and imperative demanded silence, and for a few minutes it obtained unbroken, while the gathering, keyed to high tension, studied closely the face of their leader and found it altogether illegible.

On his part he seemed forgetful of the existence of anybody but himself, forgetful almost of himself as well:  sitting low in his great chair, his body as stirless as it were bound by some spell of black magic, his far gaze probing unfathomable remotenesses of thought.

Slowly he recalled himself to his surroundings; with a suggestion of weariness he sat up and reviewed the little company that hung so breathlessly upon the issue of his judgment.  The shadow of that satiric smile returned.

“If the thing be feasible,” he promised, “it shall be done.  It remains for Thirteen to be more explicit.”

With an extravagant flourish the inventor whipped from his breastpocket a folded paper, and spread it out face uppermost on the table.

“A map of London,” he announced, “based on the latest Ordnance Survey and coloured to show the districts supplied by the mains of each individual gas depot.  Thus you will observe”—­what his long, bony finger indicated—­“the district supplied by the mains of the Westminster gas works, comprising Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, the War Office, and the Admiralty, Downing Street, the homes of hundreds of the aristocracy.  All these we can at will turn into the deadliest of death traps.”

A tense voice interrupted with the demand:  “How?”

“Quite easily, comrade:  with the ramifications of our power throughout London, all under the control of his Excellency”—­the inventor bowed to Number One—­“it should be an easy matter to place a few trustworthy men with the Westminster gas works.”

“It can readily be done,” Number One affirmed.  “And then—?”