"But what do they assure me?" he asked. "What do they assure me?"
"Didn't you have assurance?"
Graham thought. "Insurance?"
"Yes--Insurance. I remember that was the older word. They are insuringyour life. Dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lionsare being put on you. And further on other people are buying annuities.They do that on everybody who is at all prominent. Look there!"
A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screensuddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anueteson the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G." The people began to boo and shoutat this, a number of hard breathing, wildeyed men came running past,clawing with hooked fingers at the air. There was a furious crush abouta little doorway.
Asano did a brief calculation. "Seventeen per cent per annum is theirannuity on you. They would not pay so much per cent if they could seeyou now, Sire. But they do not know. Your own annuities used to be avery safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, of course. This isprobably a desperate bid. I doubt if people will get their money."
The crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for sometime they could move neither forward no backward. Graham noticed whatappeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators,and was reminded again of the economical independence of their sex. Theyseemed remarkably well able to take care of themselves in the crowd,using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to his cost.One curly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, lookedsteadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognized him, andthen, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm ina scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient asChaldea that he had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank,grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help,blind to all earthly things save that glaring, bait, thrust between themin a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring "x 5 pr. G."
"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not whatI came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue.These parasitic lunatics--"
He found himself wedged in a struggling mass of people, and this hopefulsentence went unfinished.