Sir Thomas can't get rid of. Bat made it his base. He sent down the banquet in two motor lorries--dinner for five hundred and drinks for ten thousand. Huckley voted all right. Don't you make any mistake about that. No vote, no dinner. A unanimous vote--exactly as I've said. At least, the Rector and the Doctor were the only dissentients. We didn't count them. Oh yes, Sir Thomas was there. He came and grinned at us through his park gates. He'll grin worse to-day. There's an aniline dye that you rub through a stencil-plate that eats about a foot into any stone and wears good to the last. Bat had both the lodge-gates stencilled "The Earth _is_ flat!" and all the barns and walls they could get at.... Oh Lord, but Huckley was drunk! We had to fill 'em up to make 'em forgive us for not being aeroplanes. Unthankful yokels! D'you realise that Emperors couldn't have commanded the talent Bat decanted on 'em? Why, 'Dal alone was.... And by eight o'clock not even a bit of paper left! The whole show packed up and gone, and Huckley hoo-raying for the earth being flat.' 'Very good,' I began. 'I am, as you know, a one-third proprietor of _The Bun_.' 'I didn't forget that,' Ollyett interrupted. 'That was uppermost in my mind all the time. I've got a special account for _The Bun_ to-day--it's an idyll--and just to show how I thought of you, I told 'Dal, coming home, about your Gubby Dance, and she told Winnie. Winnie came back in our char-�-banc. After a bit we had to get out and dance it in a field. It's quite a dance the way we did it--and Lafone invented a sort of gorilla lockstep procession at the end. Bat had sent down a film-chap on the chance of getting something. He was the son of a clergyman--a most dynamic personality. He said there isn't anything for the cinema in meetings _qua_ meetings--they lack action. Films are a branch of art by themselves. But he went wild over the Gubby. He said it was like Peter's vision at Joppa. He took about a million feet of it. Then I photoed it exclusive for _The Bun_. I've sent 'em in already, only remember we must eliminate Winnie's left leg in the first figure. It's too arresting.... And there you are! But I tell you I'm afraid of Bat. That man's the Personal Devil. He did it all. He didn't even come down himself. He said he'd distract his people.' 'Why didn't he ask me to come?' I persisted. 'Because he said you'd distract me. He said he wanted my brains on ice. He got 'em. I believe it's the best thing I've ever done.' He reached for _The Cake_ and re-read it luxuriously. 'Yes, out and away the best--supremely quotable,' he concluded, and--after another survey--'By God, what a genius I was yesterday!' I would have been angry, but I had not the time. That morning, Press agencies grovelled to me in _The Bun_ office for leave to use certain photos, which, they understood, I controlled, of a certain village dance. When I had sent the fifth man away on the edge of tears, my self-respect came back a little. Then there was _The Bun's_ poster to get out. Art being elimination, I fined it down to two words (one too many, as it proved)--'The Gubby!' in red, at which our manager protested; but by five o'clock he told me that I was _the_ Napoleon of Fleet Street. Ollyett's account in _The Bun_ of the Geoplanarians' Exercises and Love Feast lacked the supreme shock of his version in _The Cake_, but it bruised more; while the photos of 'The Gubby' (which, with Winnie's left leg, was why I had set the doubtful press to work so early) were beyond praise and, next day, beyond price. But even then I did not understand. A week later, I think it was, Bat Masquerier telephoned to me to come to the Trefoil. 'It's your turn now,' he said. 'I'm not asking Ollyett. Come to the stage-box.' I went, and, as Bat's guest, was received as Royalty is not. We sat well back and looked out on the packed thousands. It was _Morgiana and Drexel_, that fluid and electric review which Bat--though he gave Lafone the credit--really created. 'Ye-es,' said Bat dreamily, after Morgiana had given 'the nasty jar' to the Forty Thieves in their forty oil 'combinations.' 'As you say, I've got 'em and I can hold 'em. What a man does doesn't matter much; and how he does it don't matter either. It's the _when_--the psychological moment. 'Press can't make up for it; money can't; brains can't. A lot's luck, but all the rest is genius. I'm not speaking about My people now. I'm talking of Myself.' Then 'Dal--she was the only one who dared--knocked at the door and stood behind us all alive and panting as Morgiana. Lafone was carrying the police-court scene, and the house was ripped up crossways with laughter. 'Ah! Tell a fellow now,' she asked me for the twentieth time, 'did you love Nellie Farren when you were young?' 'Did we love her?' I answered. '"If the earth and the sky and the sea"--There were three million of us, 'Dal, and we worshipped her.' 'How did she get it across?' Dal went on. 'She was Nellie. The houses used to coo over her when she came on.' 'I've had a good deal, but I've never been cooed over yet,' said 'Dal wistfully. 'It isn't the how, it's the when,' Bat repeated. 'Ah!' He leaned forward as the house began to rock and peal full-throatedly.. . . . . . .