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flattening out the creases in the notes. Outlandish names tripped off his tongue – taels, libras, pengos, schillings, zlotys and santims, piastres, annas and lats, centavos and sens.
    Jules looked in Conder’s shaving mirror and then at a copper coin. ‘I think, you know, I am very like Napoleon III. If I grew a little beard . . .’
    â€˜I’ve got a full set now of these Irish coins,’ Conder said.
    â€˜An Imperial.’
    â€˜This pig.’
    Jules’ mind wandered from the Emperor to Sedan, from Sedan to Paris, from Paris to the Commune.
    â€˜Are you going to the party meeting? We ought to be off.’
    â€˜A symbolic figure representing Plenty.’
    â€˜Conder,’ Jules said, ‘what’s happened about Drover?’
    â€˜Appeal dismissed. A Sower and a Plough.’
    â€˜I know his wife’s sister.’
    â€˜A symbolic figure representing Peace.’
    Conder laid the coin carefully with the others on the flowered eiderdown. ‘Did you say you know his wife?’
    â€˜Her sister. They live together.’
    â€˜I might get an interview out of that,’ Conder said with faint interest.
    â€˜She’ll be at the meeting,’ Jules said.
    Conder looked at his watch. ‘We’d better be off.’ The brief exhilaration of the collector had left him; he was a journalist again dissatisfied with his pay, his profession and life.
    â€˜Will they hang him?’
    â€˜One can’t tell,’ Conder said. A journalist was supposed to understand the working of the world, but Conder had spent his life in learning the incomprehensibility of those who judged and pardoned, rewarded and punished. The world, he thought, as they walked between the coffee-stalls, past the lit restaurants, the foreign newspaper shops, and the open doorways, was run by the whims of a few men, the whims of a politician, a journalist, a bishop and a policeman. They hanged this man and pardoned that; one embezzler was in prison, but other men of the same kind were sent to Parliament. Conder, the revolutionary, became a little flushed with the injustice of it, but he knew well enough that it was not systematic enough to be called injustice.
    â€˜I hope they don’t hang him. He used to come to meetings sometimes. He never spoke.’
    â€˜You should ask the Bishop of London.’
    â€˜How can he know?’
    â€˜He’s as likely to know as anyone.’
    â€˜Isn’t it any good doing anything? Petitions? Anything?’
    â€˜That’s just the thing. You can’t tell. Petitions have been signed for every murderer who’s ever been hung. Good simple people will sign a petition for anyone. This Streatham rape and murder. When the man’s caught hundreds of women in Streatham will sign a petition for him.’
    â€˜Then it’s no good. It can’t have an effect.’
    â€˜Ah, but you can’t tell. Once in fifty times it has an effect. The minister picks up the papers and sees a name he knows. It may be only the name and not the man at all, but it makes him look again and think a bit. Or he’s just spoken to a big meeting and been cheered, and then he feels democratic and that the people know best. Or he’s had a good dinner. Perhaps he’s drunk too much. Perhaps he’s the one minister in twenty years who drinks too much. But it makes the difference. You can’t tell. You’ve got to try. None of us knows what motives they may have for hanging Drover or for reprieving him. Politics and religion are all mixed up in it.’
    They turned into the darkness and quiet of Charlotte Street. The policeman at the next corner watched them approach with cynical amusement. Jules said suddenly, ‘We are playing at this.’
    â€˜Playing at what?’
    â€˜Being Reds.’
    A saloon car with a high yapping horn tore by them, shattering the street with the brilliance of its headlights, so that doorways and