The moment the almost fainting Psammead had blown itself out every man in Throgmorton Street appeared abruptly in Babylonian full dress.
All were carefully powdered, their hair and beards were scented and curled, their garments richly embroidered. They wore rings and armlets, flat gold collars and swords, and impossible-looking head-dresses.
“I say,” a youth who had always been fair-haired broke that silence, “it’s only fancy of course—something wrong with my eyes—but you chaps do look so rum.”
“Rum,” said his friend. “Look at _you_. You in a sash! My hat! And your hair’s gone black and you’ve got a beard. It’s my belief we’ve been poisoned. You do look a jackape.”
“Old Levinstein don’t look so bad. But how was it _done_—that’s what I want to know. How _was_ it done? Is it conjuring, or what?”
“I think it is chust a ver’ bad tream,” said old Levinstein to his clerk; “all along Bishopsgate I haf seen the gommon people have their hants full of food—_goot_ food. Oh yes, without doubt a very bad tream!”
“Then I’m dreaming too, sir,” said the clerk, looking down at his legs with an expression of loathing. “I see my feet in beastly sandals as plain as plain.”
“All that goot food wasted,” said old Mr Levinstein. A bad tream—a bad tream.”
The Members of the Stock Exchange are said to be at all times a noisy lot. But the noise they made now to express their disgust at the costumes of ancient Babylon was far louder than their ordinary row. One had to shout before one could hear oneself speak.
“I only wish,” said the clerk who thought it was conjuring—he was quite close to the children and they trembled, because they knew that whatever he wished would come true. “I only wish we knew who’d done it.”
And, of course, instantly they did know, and they pressed round the Queen.
“Scandalous! Shameful! Ought to be put down by law. Give her in charge. Fetch the police,” two or three voices shouted at once.
“What is it?” she asked. “They sound like caged lions—lions by the thousand. What is it that they say?”
“They say ‘Police!’,” said Cyril briefly. “I knew they would sooner or later. And I don’t blame them, mind you.”
“I wish my guards were here!” cried the Queen. The exhausted Psammead was panting and trembling, but the Queen’s guards in red and green garments, and brass and iron gear, choked Throgmorton Street, and bared weapons flashed round the Queen.