Parcels of their stock could be picked up at auctions at considerably less than a penny a pound. The group brought some of it, and an agency for Stone’s Dried Soup was started on the top floor. A perfectly respectable enterprise. The stuff, a yellow powder of extremely unappetizing aspect, was put up in large square tins, of which six went to a case. If anybody ever came to give an order, it was, of course, executed. But the advantage of the powder was this, that things could be concealed in it very conveniently. Now and then a special case got put on a van and sent off to be exported abroad under the very nose of the policeman on duty at the corner. You understand?’

‘Perfectly,’ I said, with an expressive nod at the remnants of the bombe melting slowly in the dish.

‘Exactly. But the cases were useful in another way, too. In the basement, or in the cellar at the back, rather, two printing-presses were established. A lot of revolutionary literature of the most extreme kind was got away from the house in Stone’s Dried Soup cases. The brother of our anarchist young lady found some occupation there. He wrote articles, helped to set up type and pull off the sheets, and generally assisted the man in charge, a very able young fellow called Sevrin.

‘The guiding spirit of that group was a fanatic of social revolution. He is dead now. He was an engraver and etcher of genius. You must have seen his work. It is much sought after by certain amateurs now. But he began by being revolutionary in his art, and ended by becoming a revolutionist, after his wife and child had died in want and misery. He used to say that the bourgeois, the smug overfed lot, had killed them. That was his real belief. He still worked at his art and led a double life. He was tall, gaunt and swarthy, with a dark beard and deep-set eyes. You must have seen him. His name was Horne.’

At this I was really amazed. Of course years ago I used to meet Horne about. He looked like a powerful, rough gipsy, with a red muffler round his throat and buttoned up in a long, shabby overcoat. He talked of art with exaltation, and gave one the impression of being strung up to the verge of insanity. A small group of connoisseurs appreciated his work. Who would have thought that this man.… Amazing! And yet it was not, after all, so difficult to believe.

‘As you see,’ X went on, ‘this group was in a position to pursue its work of propaganda, and the other kind of work too, under very advantageous conditions. They were all resolute, experienced men of a superior stamp. And yet we became struck at length by the fact that plans prepared in Hermione Street almost invariably failed.’

‘Who were “we”?’ I asked pointedly.

‘Some of us in Brussels—at the centre,’ he said hastily. ‘Whatever vigorous action originated in Hermione Street seemed doomed to failure. Something always happened to baffle the best-planned manifestations in every part of Europe. It was a time of general activity. You must not imagine that all our failures are of a loud sort, with arrests and trials. That is not so. Often the police work quietly, contenting themselves by defeating our combinations by a sort of counterplotting. No arrests, no noise, no alarming of the public mind and inflaming the passions. It is a wise procedure. But at that time the police were too uniformly successful from Mediterranean to the Baltic. It was annoying and began to look dangerous. At last we in Brussels came to the conclusion that there must be some untrustworthy elements amongst the London groups. And I came over to see what could be done quietly.

‘My first step was to call upon our young Lady Patroness of anarchism at her private house. She received me in a flattering way. I judged that she knew nothing of the chemical and other operations going on at the top of the house in Hermione Street. The printing of anarchist literature was the only “activity” she seemed to be aware of there. She was displaying very strikingly the usual signs of severe enthusiasm, and had already written many sentimental articles with ferocious conclusions. I could see she was enjoying herself hugely, with all the gestures and grimaces of deadly earnestness. They suited her big-eyed, broad-browed face and the good carriage of her shapely head. Her black hair was done in an unusual and becoming style. Her brother was there, a serious youth, with arched eyebrows and wearing a red necktie, who struck me as being absolutely in the dark about everything in the world, including himself.