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144 one on any pretext, while my inflexible determination was to go to any length in order to reach you."

"You have shot Taylor!"

"What of that?" demanded the intruder coolly. “Do you know what is happening beyond your cordon of police? There are ten thousand men in Whitehall, and the most popular suggestion is that they should hang the Secretary of State for War and your illustrious self on the nearest lamp-post. In the City and beyond, the authorities are unable to make the least show of keeping order, and looting and violence are in progress on every side. There is a panic-swept exodus from London by all the high-roads to the north and west, and since five o'clock this morning more than two hundred women and children have been trampled to death. What does a door-keeper in addition matter?"

"A madman!" murmured someone warningly to those about him.

"You are a murderer!" cried another.

"No, no," protested the stranger, almost good-humouredly; "I have only disabled your man with a bullet in the shoulder, after all. But, believe me, you will be face to face with civil war in less than seven days, and even the life of a zealous servant is a small matter in averting that calamity."

"Mad—quite mad!" repeated the former speaker cautiously. "Better humour him until someone comes."

"Who are you, and what do you want?" demanded the Premier, who saw more indication of method than of madness.

"My name," replied the unceremonious being, "is Brampton Reed. Possibly," he said, turning sharply to the Minister for War, "the name has a distantly familiar ring, Sir William?"