Alistair had to discover that to be the outcast of the aristocracy does not of itself constitute one a member of the democracy. To acquire a low position in life something more is necessary than to have lost a high one. He got out at the Mansion House Station, and made his way towards the great whirlpool of traffic formed by the eight streets which debouch in front of the Royal Exchange. Here he could not resist the inclination to stand still for a minute on one of the small islets of pavement which divide the stream. He told himself that this was the centre of the world’s business, the heart of that vast invisible machine which steadily converts the labour of fifteen hundred millions of men into the wealth of a prosperous few. The low brown building, blackened with London grime, which faced him with such solid immovability, needed no letters on its front to tell that it was the Bank of England. It was here, surely, and not in that pretentious palace further west beside the river, that the true centre of gravity resided; this really was the core of that political and social system with whose genius his genius was at war; it was for the men whom that brown square of building sheltered, and not for anyone else, that the legislators travailed, and the police went their daily rounds, as the soldiers fought on far-off continents and the sailors adventured in uncharted seas. In the interest of wealth it was, in the last analysis, that the Raj had been built up, that the firm framework of society had been compacted, and that such outlaws as himself were held in check. Not Yahveh, and not Christ, neither Ormuzd nor Ahriman, but Mammon was the God of the Anglo-Roman Raj--Mammon, whom that Syrian Redeemer had so much hated; Mammon, who had built all the churches ever since unto this day. Alistair’s head drooped on his breast as he moved slowly on. He found himself presently in a narrow turning off Lombard Street, a sunless retreat giving no outward indication that the great spiders of finance set their webs within. It was the quarter of bankers’ bankers. A clerk from the head office of some limited company with branches in half the towns of England would walk in quickly through a swing-door, pass through an outer office without stopping, and approach a long table at which two or three men were seated side by side. A name would be mentioned, a bundle of bills exhibited, and some figure pronounced. The two or three heads would turn and exchange glances; one would give a nod across the table, and the clerk would walk out again. The nod had meant the loan of a million for twenty-four hours.