Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 9.pdf/178

 I perceive I shall cut a queer figure in that focus. I shall affect a certain spurious ease of carriage no doubt. "The fact is," I shall begin

§ 7

And now see how an initial hypothesis may pursue and overtake its maker. Our thumbmarks have been taken, they have travelled by pneumatic tube to the central office of the municipality hard by Lucerne, and have gone on thence to the headquarters of the index at Paris. There, after a rough preliminary classification, I imagine them photographed on glass, and flung by means of a lantern in colossal images upon a screen, all finely squared, and the careful experts marking and measuring their several convolutions. And then off goes a brisk clerk to the long galleries of the index building.

I have told them they will find no sign of us, but you see him going from gallery to gallery, from bay to bay, from drawer to drawer, and from card to card. "Here he is!" he mutters to himself, and he whips out a card and reads. "But that is impossible!" he says

You figure us returning after a day or so of such Utopian experiences as I must presently describe, to the central office in Lucerne, even as we have been told to do.

I make my way to the desk of the man who has dealt with us before. "Well?" I say, cheerfully, "have you heard?"

His expression dashes me a little. "We've heard," he says, and adds, "it's very peculiar."