The music suddenly ceased and a voice said: “Passengers for Bellacita will now proceed to Exit D. Passengers for Bellacita will now proceed to Exit D,” while, simultaneously, the conductress appeared in the doorway and said: “Follow me, please. Have your embarkation papers, medical cards, customs clearance slips, currency control vouchers, passports, tickets, identity dockets, travel orders, emigration certificates, baggage checks and security sheets ready for inspection at the barrier, please.”

The Very Important Persons followed her out, mingled with the less important persons who had been waiting in a nearby room, stepped into a dusty gale behind the four spinning screws of the aeroplane, mounted the step-ladder and were soon strapped into their seats as though waiting the attention of the dentist. A steward gave them brief instructions in the case of their being forced down over the sea and announced: “We shall arrive at Bellacita at sixteen hours Neutralian time.”

“An appalling thought occurs to me,” said Whitemaid, “can this mean we get no luncheon?”

“They eat very late in Neutralia, I believe.”

“Yes, but four o’clock!”

“I’m sure they will have arranged something for us.”

“I pray they have.”

Something had been arranged but not a luncheon. The Very Important Persons stepped out some hours later into the brilliant sunshine of Bellacita airport and at once found their hands shaken in swift succession by a deputation of their hosts. “I bid you welcome to the land of Bellorius,” said their spokesman.

His name, he told them with a neat bow, was Arturo Fe; his rank Doctor of Bellacita University; but there was nothing academic in his appearance. Rather, Scott-King thought, he might be a slightly ageing film actor. He had thin, calligraphic moustaches, a hint of sidewhisker, sparse but well-ordered hair, a gold-rimmed monocle, three gold teeth, and neat, dark clothes.

“Madam,” he said, “gentlemen, your luggage will be cared for. The motor-cars await you. Come with me. Passports? Papers? Do not give them a thought. Everything is arranged. Come.”

At this stage Scott-King became aware of a young woman standing stolidly among them. He had taken notice of her in London where she had towered some six inches above the heads of the crowd.

“I come,” she said.

Dr. Fe bowed. “Fe,” he said.

“Sveningen,” she answered.

“You are one of us? Of the Bellorius Association?” asked Dr. Fe.

“I speak not English well. I come.”

Dr. Fe tried her in Neutralian, French, Italian and German. She replied in her own remote Nordic tongue. Dr. Fe raised hands and eyes in a pantomime of despair.

“You speak much English. I speak little English. So we speak English, yes? I come.”

“You come?” said Dr. Fe.

“I come.”

“We are honoured,” said Dr. Fe.

He led them between flowering oleanders and borders of camomile, past shaded café tables at which Whitemaid longingly looked, through the airport vestibule to the glass doors beyond.

Here there was a hitch. Two sentries, shabbily uniformed but armed for action, war-worn, it seemed, but tigers for duty, barred their passage. Dr. Fe tried a high hand, he tried charm, he offered them cigarettes; suddenly a new side of his character was revealed; he fell into demoniac rage, he shook his fists, he bared his chryselephantine teeth, he narrowed his eyes to Mongol slits of hate; what he said was unintelligible to Scott-King but it was plainly designed to wound. The men stood firm.

Then, as suddenly as it had arisen, the squall passed. He turned to his guests. “Excuse one moment,” he said. “These stupid fellows do not understand their orders. It will be arranged by the officer.” He despatched an underling.

“We box the rude mens?” suggested Miss Sveningen, moving cat-like towards the soldiers.

“No. Forgive them I beg you. They think it their duty.”

“Such little men should be polite,” said the giantess.

The officer came; the doors flew open; the soldiers did something with their tommy-guns which passed as a salute. Scott-King raised his hat as the little party swept out into the blaze of sunshine to the waiting cars.

“This superb young creature,” said Scott-King, “would you say she was a slightly incongruous figure?”

“I find her eminently, transcendently congruous,” said Whitemaid. “I exult in her.”

Dr. Fe gallantly took the ladies under his own charge. Scott-King and Whitemaid rode with an underling. They bowled along through the suburbs of Bellacita; tram-lines, half-finished villas, a rush of hot wind, a dazzle of white concrete. At first, when they were fresh from the upper air, the heat had been agreeable; now his skin began to prick and tickle and Scott-King realized that he was unsuitably dressed.

“Exactly ten hours and a half since I had anything to eat,” said Whitemaid.

The underling leaned towards them from the front seat and pointed out places of interest. “Here,” he said, “the anarchists shot General Cardenas. Here syndico-radicals shot the auxiliary bishop. Here the Agrarian League buried alive ten Teaching Brothers. Here the bimetallists committed unspeakable atrocities on the wife of Senator Mendoza.”

“Forgive me for interrupting you,” said Whitemaid, “but could you tell us where we are going?”

“To the Ministry. They are all happy to meet you.”

“And we are happy to meet them. But just at the moment my friend and I are rather hungry.”

“Yes,” said the underling with compassion. “We have heard of it in our papers. Your rations in England, your strikes. Here things are very expensive but there is plenty for all who pay, so our people do not strike but work hard to become rich. It is better so, no?”

“Perhaps. We must have a talk about it some time. But at the moment it is not so much the general economic question as a personal immediate need —”

“We arrive,” said the underling. “Here is the Ministry.”

Like much modern Neutralian building the Ministry was unfinished, but it was conceived in severe one-party style. A portico of unembellished columns, a vast, blank doorway, a bas-relief symbolizing Revolution and Youth and Technical Progress and the National Genius. Inside, a staircase. On the staircase was a less predictable feature; ranged on either side like playing-cards, like a startling hand composed entirely of Kings and Knaves, stood ascending ranks of trumpeters aged from sixty to sixteen, dressed in the tabards of medieval heralds; more than this they wore blond bobbed wigs; more than this their cheeks were palpably rouged. As Scott-King and Whitemaid set foot on the lowest step these figures of fantasy raised their trumpets to their lips and sounded a flourish, while one who might from his extreme age have been father to them all, rattled in a feeble way on a little kettledrum. “Frankly,” said Whitemaid, “I am not in good heart for this kind of thing.”

They mounted between the blaring ranks, were greeted on the piano nobile by a man in plain evening dress, and led to the reception hall which with its pews and thrones had somewhat the air of a court of law and was in fact not infrequently used for condemning aspiring politicians to exile on one or other of the inhospitable islands that lay off the coast of the country.

Here they found an assembly. Under a canopy, on the central throne, sat the Minister of Rest and Culture, a saturnine young man who had lost most of his fingers while playing with a bomb during the last revolution. Scott-King and Whitemaid were presented to him by Dr. Fe. He smiled rather horribly and extended a maimed hand. Half a dozen worthies stood round him. Dr. Fe introduced them. Honorific titles, bows, smiles, shakes of the hand; then Scott-King and Whitemaid were led to their stalls amid their fellow guests, now about twelve in number. In each place, on the red-plush seat, lay a little pile of printed matter. “Not precisely esculent,” said Whitemaid. Trumpets and drum sounded without; another and final party arrived and was presented; then the proceedings began.