"The dancing-saloon--still advertising itself as 'Baronial Hall'--had been converted into a main ward, holding forty beds. It was there that Farrell found me at work, that night. He had interviewed the Adjutant--as we called the harassed secretary who, brayed daily between the upper and nether millstones of official instructions and 'voluntary effort,' never left his desk nor dared to wander abroad for fresh air--the gardens having been specially laid out to trick the absent-minded and induce them to lose their way. Farrell had simply told the Adjutant that he wished to see me on urgent personal business. The Adjutant could not hesitate before a presence that might, in its dress-clothes and sable-lined overcoat, have stood among the statues outside for personified Opulence. "'Very good,' said he. 'Oh, yes, certainly. I will send for the man. . . . Your business is private, you say? . . . I am very sorry: we are all at sixes and sevens here, with every office crowded. But there's an empty saloon--one of those absurdities with which the management in old days sought to tickle the public taste. They are going to turn it into a ward in a couple of days, and that's why we have left it unoccupied. If that will do, and you'll come with me, we'll see if the electric light functions. I believe the fitters were at work there this afternoon.'" "That, as Farrell told me ten minutes later, was how it happened. For me, when answering the message that a stranger had called to see me on urgent business, I walked as directed, across the matted moonlit lawn to this building which I had never visited before--and when, pushing the door wide, I saw Farrell standing under the electric lamps, with his dog beside him--I fell back a pace and half-turned to run for it. "For he was alone, yet not alone: a hundred Farrells stood there. No, a battalion, and all of them Farrells! And a battalion of dogs! "I stepped back from the ledge of the threshold. Above the doorway an inscription in faded gilt letters shone out against the moon--'VERSAILLES GALLERY OF MIRRORS. ADMISSION 3D.' "Then I understood. This absurd and ghastly apartment was lined, all around its walls, with mirrors, in panels separated only by thin gilt edgings. Dust lay thick on the floor; cobwebs hung from the ceiling in festoons; there was not a stick of furniture in the place. But a battalion of Farrells stood in it, and there entered to it, and stood, under the new electric fittings, a battalion of Foes. "Farrell's aspect was grave. His eyebrows went up at the choke of half-insane laughter with which I greeted him. 'Foe, my man,' said he, eyeing my khaki. 'So you have come to this, have you?'