WORLD'S END

The trouble was, the hours passed so slowly. Lanny's watch was gone, so he couldn't follow them. He could only observe the slit of light; and at the end of June the days linger long in Paris. Lanny recalled that at three o'clock the treaty was to be signed, and he occupied his mind with picturing that historic scene. He knew the Galerie des Glaces, and how they would fix it up with a long horseshoe table, and gilded chairs for the delegates from all the nations of the earth. Most of them would be black-clad; but the military ones would be wearing bright-colored uniforms with rows of medals, and there would be silk-robed pashas and emirs and maharajas and mandarins from where the gorgeous East showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold. He could picture the equipages rolling up the great avenue, lined with cavalry in steel-blue helmets, with red and white pennants fluttering on their lances. He visioned the palace, with the important personages ascending the great flight of steps, between rows of the Gardes Rйpublicaine, clad in brass cuirasses, white pants, and high black patent-leather boots; on their heads the shiniest of brass helmets with long horsetails stuck in the tops. There would be two of them to each step, their shining sabers at present arms. Inside, the hall would be crowded, and there would be a babel of whispering, the polite chit-chat of the grand monde which Lanny knew so well. How everlastingly delightful to be in places where you were assured that only the really important could come!

The treaty would be bulky, printed on vellum sheets decorated with numиrous red seals. Presumably somebody would have checked it this time and made certain it was right. The enemy signers would be escorted by those huissiers with silver chains who had been the bane of Lanny's life, because they were forever trying to stop a secretary-translator from entering rooms where his chief had told him to go. Lanny had seen pictures of the two unhappy Germans: one big and beefy, like the proprietor of a Bierstube, the other lean and timid-looking, like a private tutor. They were the scapegoats, carrying the sins of their people, and signing a confession on two dotted lines.

The huissiers would command silence, and a hush would fall while the pens scratched. A tedious ceremony, for the plenipotentiaries from all over the world had to fall in line and sign four documents: the treaty proper, the protocol with modifications extracted by the German clamor, an agreement regarding the administration of the Rhine districts, and an agreement with Poland regarding the treatment of minorities - she would keep the minorities but not the agreement, Professor Alston had remarked while helping to draft this document.

Lanny's imaginings were interrupted by the thunder of cannon. So! It was signed! Those would be the guns on the Place d'Armes; and then a booming farther away - that would be the old fort at Mont Valerien. Shouts from the crowds in the near-by streets - Lanny knew how people would behave, he had done it himself on Armistice day at St. Thomas's Academy in Connecticut. The biggest banker in that state had warned him that he might get into jail if he didn't mend his ideas; and sure enough, here he was! He got up and began to pace the floor again.

Better to go on thinking about the treaty. He had been told by some of the insiders that General Smuts, head of the South African delegation, was going to sign under protest, stating that "We have not yet achieved the real peace for which the peoples are looking." So, after all, the little group of liberals had not protested in vain! Alston had said that this treaty would keep the world in turmoil for ten years, twenty years, whatever time it took to bring it into line with the Fourteen Points. Was he right? Or was that French general right who had announced to the company at Mrs. Emily's: "This treaty is turning loose a wounded tiger on the world. He will crawl into a hole and nurse his wounds, and come out hungrier and fiercer than ever"?

Lanny couldn't make up his mind about it; nothing to do but wait and see. Some day he would know - provided, of course, the French army didn't shoot him at sunrise tomorrow morning.

III

The sun's rays do not linger very long in any place, and the light faded quickly from Lanny's cell. He sat in twilight, and thought: "Surely Robbie must have returned by now!" His stomach was complaining, and in many ways he was tiring of this bad joke. When at last he heard a jailer approaching his cell he was glad, even though it might mean a court martial. "Venez," said the man; and escorted him to the office of the commissaire again.

There were the same three officials, and with them, not Robbie, as the prisoner had hoped, but Uncle Jesse! So once more Lanny had to think fast. What did it mean? Doubtless his uncle had been brought in, like himself, as a suspect. Had he talked? And if so, what had he said?