Through the sullen streets of the terrorized city Miss Chuff, Quimbleton and Bleak proceeded toward the great building where the Pan-Antis had their headquarters. They had left Mrs. Bleak, the children and the horse at a quiet soda-fountain in the suburbs. After repeated application over the wireless telephone, the terrible Bishop—the Prohibishop, as Quimbleton called him—had agreed to grant them an audience, and had accorded them safe-conduct through the chuff troops. Even so, their progress was difficult. Every few hundred yards they were halted and subjected to curt inquiry. Men and women who had heard of their gallant struggle against fearful odds pressed forward in an attempt to seize their hands, to embrace and applaud them, but these evidences of enthusiasm were sternly repressed by the chuffs.
Bleak was frankly nervous as they approached the Chuff Building.
"What line of talk are we going to adopt?" he asked.
"Like any self-respecting line," replied Quimbleton, "Ours will be the shortest distance between two points. The first point is that we want to obtain something from Chuff. The second is that we have some information to give him which will be of immense value to him. This we shall hold over him as a club, to force him to concede what we want."
"And what is this club?" asked Bleak, somewhat suspicious of his friend\'s sanguine disposition.
"The admirable plan," said Quimbleton, "is Theodolinda\'s idea. She knows her father better than we do. She says that his passion is for prohibiting things. He thinks he has now prohibited everything possible. We are in a position to tell him something that still remains unprohibited. His eagerness to know what that may be will make him yield to our request."
Bleak pondered gloomily. As far as he could recall, the Prohibition Government had overlooked nothing. The quaint part of it was that some of its prohibitions, carried to their logical extreme, had curiously overleaped their mark. For instance, finding it impossible to enforce the laws against playing games on Sundays, the Government had concluded that the only way to make the Sabbath utterly immaculate was to abolish it altogether, which was done. Other laws, probably based upon genuine zeal for human welfare, had resulted in odd evasions or legal fictions. For instance, people were forbidden to miss trains. The penalty for missing a train was ten days\' hard labor splitting infinitives in the government tract-factory. Rather than impose this harsh punishment on any one, good-hearted engineers would permit their trains to loiter about the stations until they felt certain no other passengers would turn up. Consequently no trains were ever on time, and the Government was forced to do away with time entirely. Another thing that was abolished was hot weather. It had been found too tedious to tilt the axis of the earth, therefore all the thermometers were re-scaled. When the temperature was really 96 degrees, the mercury registered only 70 degrees, and every one was saying how jolly cool it was for the time of year. This, of course, was careless, for there was no such thing as time or year, but still people kept on saying it. Bleak was thinking over these matters when he suddenly recalled that it was forbidden to remember things as they had been under the old regime. He pulled himself up with a start. In order to make his mind a blank he tried to imagine himself about to write a leading editorial for the Balloon. This was so successful that he did not come to earth again until they stood in the ante-room—or as Quimbleton called it, the anti-room—of the Bishop.
"Who is to be spokesman?" he said apprehensively, gazing with distaste at the angular females who were pecking at typewriters. "It would be unseemly for me to present my own claims in this project. Quimbleton, you are the one—you have the gift of the tongue."
"I would rather have the gift of the bung," whispered Quimbleton resolutely as they were ushered into the inner sanctum.
The dreaded Bishop sat at an immense ebony flat-topped desk. The room was furnished like his mind, that is to say, sparsely, and without any southern exposure. A peculiarly terrifying feature of the scene was that the top of the desk was completely bare, not a single paper lay on it. Remembering his own desk in the newspaper office, Bleak felt that this was unnatural and monstrous. He noticed a breathoscope on the mantelpiece, with its sensitive needle trembling on the scaled dial which read thus:—
As he watched the indicator oscillate rapidly on the dial, and finally subside uncertainly at zero, he thanked heaven that they had indulged in no psychic grogs that day.
The Bishop\'s black beard foamed downward upon the desk like a gloomy cataract. Quimbleton for a moment was almost abashed, and regretted that he had not thought to whitewash his own dingy thicket.
Bishop Chuff\'s piercing and cruel gaze stabbed all three. He ignored Theodolinda with contempt. His disdain was so complete that (as the unhappy girl said afterward) he seemed more like a younger brother than a father. There were no chairs: they were forced to stand. In a small mirror fastened to the edge of his desk the sneering potentate could note the dial-reading of the instrument without turning. He watched the reflected needle flicker and come to rest.
"So, Mr. Quimbleton," he said, in a harsh and untuned voice, "You come comparatively sober. Strange that you should choose to be unintoxicated when you face the greatest ordeal of your life."
The savage irony of this angered Quimbleton.
"One touch of liquor makes the whole world kin," he said. "I assure you I have no desire to claim kinship with your bitter and intolerant soul."
"Ah?" said the Bishop, with mock politeness. "You relieve me greatly. I had thought you desired to claim ............