“Was it my Lord Buck,” he inquired, “who said that the King of England ‘shall’ do something?”

Buck flushed and said testily:

“I mean it must...it ought to, as I say we’ve done our best to be generous. I defy any one to deny it. As it is Mr. Wayne, I don’t want to say a word that’s uncivil. I hope it’s not uncivil to say that you can be, and ought to be, in gaol. It is criminal to stop public works for a whim. A man might as well burn ten thousand onions in his front garden or bring up his children to run naked in the street, as do what you say you have a right to do. People have been compelled to sell before now. The King could compel you, and I hope he will.”

“Until he does,” said Wayne, calmly, “the power and government of this great nation is on my side and not yours, and I defy you to defy it.”

“In what sense,” cried Barker, with his feverish eyes and hands, “is the Government on your side?”

With one ringing movement Wayne unrolled a great parchment on the table. It was decorated down the sides with wild water-colour sketches of vestrymen in crowns and wreaths.

“The Charter of the Cities,” he began.

Buck exploded in a brutal oath and laughed.

“That tomfool’s joke. Haven’t we had enough...”

“And there you sit,” cried Wayne, springing erect and with a voice like a trumpet, “with no argument but to insult the King before his face.”

Buck rose also with blazing eyes.

“I am hard to bully,” he began...and the slow tones of the King struck in with incomparable gravity:

“My Lord Buck, I must ask you to remember that your King is present. It is not often that he needs to protect himself among his subjects.”

Barker turned to him with frantic gestures.

“For God’s sake don’t back up the madman now,” he implored. “Have your joke another time. Oh, for Heaven’s sake...”

“My Lord Provost of South Kensington,” said King Auberon, steadily. “I do not follow your remarks which are uttered with a rapidity unusual at Court. Nor do your well-meant efforts to convey the rest with your fingers materially assist me. I say that my Lord Provost of North Kensington, to whom I spoke, ought not in the presence of his Sovereign to speak disrespectfully of his Sovereign’s ordinances. Do you disagree?”

Barker turned restlessly in his chair, and Buck cursed without speaking. The King went on in a comfortable voice:

“My Lord Provost of Notting Hill, proceed.”

Wayne turned his blue eyes on the King, and to every one’s surprise there was a look in them not of triumph, but of a certain childish distress.

“I am sorry, your Majesty,” he said; “I fear I was more than equally to blame with the Lord Provost of North Kensington. We were debating somewhat eagerly, and we both rose to our feet. I did so first, I am ashamed to say. The Provost of North Kensington is, therefore, comparatively innocent. I beseech your Majesty to address your rebuke chiefly, at least, to me. Mr. Buck is not innocent, for he did no doubt, in the heat of the moment, speak disrespectfully. But the rest of the discussion he seems to me to have conducted with great good temper.”

Buck looked genuinely pleased, for business men are all simple-minded, and have therefore that degree of communion with fanatics. The King, for some reason, looked, for the first time in his life, ashamed.

“This very kind speech of the Provost of Notting Hill,” began Buck, pleasantly, “seems to me to show that we have at last got on to a friendly footing. Now come, Mr. Wayne. Five hundred pounds have been offered to you for a property you admit not to be worth a hundred. Well, I am a rich man and I won’t be outdone in generosity. Let us say fifteen hundred pounds and have done with it. And let us shake hands.” And he rose, glowing and laughing.

“Fifteen hundred pounds,” whispered Mr. Wilson of Bayswater; “can we do fifteen hundred pounds?”

“I’ll stand the racket,” said Buck heartily. “Mr. Wayne is a gentleman and has spoken up for me. So I suppose the negotiations are at an end.”

Wayne bowed.

“They are indeed at an end. I am sorry I cannot sell you the property.”

“What?” cried Mr. Barker, starting to his feet.

“Mr. Buck has spoken correctly,” said the King.

“I have, I have,” cried Buck, springing up also; “I said...”

“Mr. Buck has spoken correctly,” said the King; “the negotiations are at an end.”

All the men at the table rose to their feet; Wayne alone rose without excitement.

“Have I, then,” he said, “your Majesty’s permission to depart? I have given my last answer.”

“You have it,” said Auberon, smiling, but not lifting his eyes from the table. And amid a dead silence the Provost of Notting Hill passed out of the room.

“Well?” said Wilson, turning round to Barker, “Well?”

Barker shook his head desperately.

“The man ought to be in an asylum,” he said. “But one thing is clear, we need not bother further about him. The man can be treated as mad.”

“Of course,” said Buck, turning to him with sombre decisiveness. “You’re perfectly right, Barker. He is a good enough fellow, but he can be treated as mad. Let’s put it in simple form. Go and tell any twelve men in any town, go and tell any doctor in any town, that there is a man offered fifteen hundred pounds for a thing he could sell commonly for four hundred, and that when asked for a reason for not accepting it he pleads the inviolate sanctity of Notting Hill and calls it the Holy Mountain. What would they say? What more can we have on our side than the common-sense of everybody? On what else do all laws rest? I’ll tell you, Barker, what’s better than any further discussion. Let’s send in workmen on the spot to pull down Pump Street. And if old Wayne says a word, arrest him as a lunatic. That’s all.”

Barker’s eyes kindled.

“I always regarded you, Buck, if you don’t mind my saying so, as a very strong man. I’ll follow you.”

“So, of course will I,” said Wilson.

Buck rose again impulsively.

“Your Majesty,” he said, glowing with popularity, “I beseech your Majesty to consider favourably the proposal to which we have committed ourselves. Your Majesty’s leniency, our own offers, have fallen in vain on that extraordinary man. He may be right. He may be God. He may be the devil. But we think it, for practical purposes, more probable that he is off his head. Unless that assumption were acted on, all human affairs would go to pieces. We act on it, and we propose to start operations in Notting Hill at once.”

The King leaned back in his chair.

“The Charter of the Cities...” he said with a rich intonation.

But Buck, being finally serious, was also cautious, and did not again make the mistake of disrespect.

“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing, “I am not here to say a word against anything your Majesty has said or done. You are a far better educated man than I, and no doubt there were reasons, upon intellectual grounds, for those proceedings. But may I ask you and appeal to your common good-nature for a sincere answer? When you drew up the Charter of the Cities did you contemplate the rise of a man like Adam Wayne? Did you expect that the Charter...whether it was an experiment, or a scheme of decoration, or a joke...could ever really come to this...to stopping a vast scheme of ordinary business, to shutting up a road, to spoiling the chances of cabs, omnibuses, railway stations, to disorganizing half a city, to risking a kind of civil war? Whatever were your objects, were they that?”

Barker and Wilson looked at him admiringly; the King more admiringly still.

“Provost Buck,” said Auberon, “you speak in public uncommonly well. I give you your point with the magnanimity of an artist. My scheme did not include the appearance of Mr. Wayne. Alas! would that my poetic power had been great enough.”