“Stop,” Mr. Bondy interrupted her. “Your God doesn’t understand. If He takes away our illusions He is doing something confoundly opposed to nature. He’s simply impossible, Ellen, utterly impossible. If He were a reasonable being, He would realize it. He’s either wholly inexperienced or else completely and criminally destructive. It’s a great pity, Ellen. I haven’t anything against religion, but this God doesn’t know what He ought to want. Depart into the wilderness, Saint Ellen, with your second sight. You are out of place among us mortals. Farewell, Ellen; or rather—good-bye for ever.”

XI. The First Blow Struck

CHAPTER XI

THE FIRST BLOW STRUCK

E XACTLY how it happened has not yet been established, but just at the very time when the little factory belonging to R. Marek, Engineer, 1651 Mixa Street, Břevnov, was garrisoned by detectives and surrounded by a cordon of police, unknown malefactors stole the original Marek Karburator. Despite the most active search, not a trace of the stolen machine was found.

Not long afterwards Jan Binder, the proprietor of a merry-go-round, was looking round the premises of a dealer in old iron in Hastal Square with a view to purchasing a little naphtha motor to run his roundabout and its orchestrion. The dealer offered him a big copper cylinder with a piston, and said it was a very economical motor; all one had to do was to shovel in a little coal, and it would run for months. Jan Binder was seized with a strange, almost blind faith in the copper cylinder, and he bought it for three hundred crowns. Then he hauled it away on a truck with his own hands to his merry-go-round, which was standing out of action near Zlichov.