He understood, of course. What he said was, "The late Mr. Gladstone, they tell me, used to address Queen Victoria as if she were a public meeting. She complained that she didn't like it . . . and anyway, if you two can't help it, I can't help the acoustic defects of this flat. . . . Some more brandy? You'd better. It's a beast of a night; but your faithful dog shall bear you company." NIGHT THE SECOND. THE MEETING AT THE BATHS. Foe's man, after whistling ten minutes or so for a taxi, returned upstairs, powdered with sleet. There wasn't, he said, so much as a four-wheeler crawling in the street. We went down and waited in the hall while he whistled again. "Where is this show of yours being held?" Foe asked, after a bit. "In the Baths," I told him, "just across the bridge. Yes, actually _in_ the great Swimming Bath. . . . You needn't be afraid, though. They drain it." "I don't care if they omitted that precaution," said he. "This is an adventure, and I'm for taking it in the proper spirit. Let's walk." He pushed back the catch of the lock. The door burst open, hurling him back against the wall, as his man came flying through, fairly projected into our arms by the pressure of wind in the porch. "Make up the fire, put out the whisky, and go to bed," Foe bawled at him. "Eh? . . . Yes, that's all right; I have my latch-key." I couldn't have expostulated if I'd wanted to. The wind filled my mouth. We butted out after him into the gale, Jimmy turning in the doorway to let out a skirling war-whoop--"just to brace up the flat-dwellers," he explained afterwards. "I wanted to tell 'em that St. George was for Merry England, but there wasn't time." We didn't say much on the way. The wind took care of that. On the bridge we had to claw the parapet to pull ourselves along; and just as we won to the portico of the Baths there came a squall that knocked us all sideways. Foe and Jimmy cast their arms about one pillar, I clung to another; and the policeman, who at that moment shot his lantern upon us from his shelter in the doorway, pardonably mistook our condition. He advised us--as a friend, if he might say so--to go home quietly. "But there's a public meeting inside," said I. "There might be, or there might not be," he allowed. "It's a thin one anyway. You'll get no fun out of it." "And I am due to make a speech there," I went on. "That's to say, they want me to propose or second a vote of thanks or something of the sort." "If I was you, sir," advised the constable, kindness itself, "I wouldn't, however much they wanted it." I gave him my card. He held it close under the ray of his bull's-eye and altered his manner with a jerk. "Begging your pardon, Sir Roderick--" "Not at all," I assured him. "Most natural mistake in the world. If there's a side entrance, now, near the platform--"