"With pleasure," resumed Syme. "In all your present acts and
surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an
aunt who lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have
found people living from preference under a public-house. You have
a heavy iron door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the
humiliation of calling yourself Mr. Chamberlain. You surround
yourself with steel instruments which make the place, if I may say
so, more impressive than homelike. May I ask why, after taking all
this trouble to barricade yourselves in the bowels of the earth,
you then parade your whole secret by talking about anarchism to
every silly woman in Saffron Park?"

Gregory smiled.

"The answer is simple," he said. "I told you I was a serious
anarchist, and you did not believe me. Nor do they believe me.
Unless I took them into this infernal room they would not believe
me."

Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory
went on.

"The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I
became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable
disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops
in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and
Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are
strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind.
I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters