They
pay several dozen lions for those apartments to the Council--to you, I
should say."
Graham still felt a difficulty with the coinage, and this mention of a
dozen lions brought him abruptly to that matter. In a moment the
screaming temples and their swarming touts were forgotten in this new
interest. A turn of a phrase suggested, and an answer confirmed the idea
that gold and silver were both demonetised, that stamped gold which had
begun its reign amidst the merchants of Phoenicia was at last dethroned.
The change had been graduated but swift, brought about by an extension of
the system of cheques that had even in his previous life already
practically superseded gold in all the larger business transactions. The
common traffic of the city, the common currency indeed of all the world,
was conducted by means of the little brown, green and pink council
cheques for small amounts, printed with a blank payee. Asano had several
with him, and at the first opportunity he supplied the gaps in his set.
They were printed not on tearable paper, but on a semi-transparent fabric
of silken flexibility, interwoven with silk. Across them all sprawled a
facsimile of Graham's signature, his first encounter with the curves and
turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.
Some intermediary experiences made no impression sufficiently vivid to
prevent the matter of the disarmament claiming his thoughts again; a
blurred picture of a Theosophist temple that promised MIRACLES in
enormous letters of unsteady fire was least submerged perhaps, but then
came the view of the dining hall in Northumberland Avenue.
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