Through street after street, through district after district, went the prodigy of the flying elephant, calling crowds to every window, and driving the traffic left and right. And still through all this insane publicity the three cabs toiled after it, until they came to be regarded as part of a procession, and perhaps the advertisement of a circus. They went at such a rate that distances were shortened beyond belief, and Syme saw the Albert Hall in Kensington when he thought that he was still in Paddington. The animal’s pace was even more fast and free through the empty, aristocratic streets of South Kensington, and he finally headed towards that part of the skyline where the enormous Wheel of Earl’s Court stood up in the sky. The wheel grew larger and larger, till it filled heaven like the wheel of stars.
The beast outstripped the cabs. They lost him round several corners, and when they came to one of the gates of the Earl’s Court Exhibition they found themselves finally blocked. In front of them was an enormous crowd; in the midst of it was an enormous elephant, heaving and shuddering as such shapeless creatures do. But the President had disappeared.
“Where has he gone to?” asked Syme, slipping to the ground.
“Gentleman rushed into the Exhibition, sir!” said an official in a dazed manner. Then he added in an injured voice: “Funny gentleman, sir. Asked me to hold his horse, and gave me this.”
He held out with distaste a piece of folded paper, addressed: “To the Secretary of the Central Anarchist Council.”
The Secretary, raging, rent it open, and found written inside it:—
“When the herring runs a mile, Let the Secretary smile; When the herring tries to fly , Let the Secretary die.