“Amaranth wanted to stay, to hear what I was going to say to you,” said Lembken, “but I make everybody mind his own business in the People’s House. Besides, she might have fallen in love with you. I like to have good-looking people about me.” He looked at me and at the Ray rod, and then at me again; then, with a petulant gesture, he sent the weapon flying across the room. “There! You see I trust you!” he said, smiling. “Sit down beside me. We understand each other, so we will be frank. Men such as we are above deceptions. You ought to be about a hundred and twenty-eight years old!” He spoke jocularly, and yet I could see that he wished to be sure I was the man he sought. Evidently he knew my history. He heaved a sigh of immense satisfaction when I acquiesced. “I was not sure it was you,” he said. “One has to be cautious when so much depends on it. And Sanson was beginning to suspect, but he does not know that I discovered Lazaroff’s papers. Sanson does not know everything, you see, Arnold. What do you think of his Rest Cure, as the people term it? It is his, not mine, you know.” “I think he is Satan himself,” I answered quickly. Yet I was not sure that I preferred this perfumed degenerate to Sanson, with his maniac cruelty. A smile crept over the flabby face. Lembken looked pleased. He placed his hand upon my shoulder. “A classical scholar,” he said. “You refer to the mythical ruler of the infernal realms. Assuredly we shall soon understand each other. Sanson is a strong man. When I meet strong men I let them be as strong as they want to be. They break themselves to pieces. In a democracy like ours there is no room for strong men. Sanson doesn’t understand that. He thinks the Mayor of the Palace is going to step into the shoes of the Roi Fainéant. But the Roi Fainéant always wins—if he sits still. I am the Roi Fainéant.” I was so amazed at the strange psychology he was disclosing that I found no answer ready. I knew he was dissembling some deep-laid purpose, but why he had need of me I could not imagine. And the man’s affectation of good-will almost began to delude me. “Do you like David’s daughter?” he began, so suddenly that I started. “Ah!” he continued, shaking his finger waggishly, “one seldom sees a woman approximating so closely to the Sanson norm. There is an attachment, if I know young men. How would you like her for your own? I hit the mark, then?” Before I could reply he was on another tack. “Now, there is Hancock,” he resumed. “He is a Christian, and ought to go to the defectives’ shops, according to the law Sanson made. But I don’t care. I would just as soon have Christianity as the Ant, or Mormonism, as they have in America. I don’t like tyranny. If I had my way everyone would be perfectly free. Sanson doesn’t see that he has embittered the people. He is harrying them with his laws, and they blame me. I am the people’s friend.”