"Silence!" cried the chief constable savagely. He opened the street door and peeped out.
"All's clear. Run--down that alley opposite. Say something from your balcony, never mind what--they won't hear more than two words."
"That's just all that I want them to hear," cried Rames.
He had foreseen that moment. He ran with one or two of his friends to the back door of his hotel. A path was made for them through the crowded hall. He came out upon the balcony, and up and down the hill as far as his eyes could see the street was thronged. He stretched out his hand. He had a second of absolute silence, and in that second his voice rang out:
"My constituents----"
The roar which answered him showed him that once more his foresight had served him well. No other word of his was heard. But any other words would have spoiled the two which he had uttered.
CHAPTER XVI
[WORDS OVER THE TELEPHONE]
The next two hours were for Rames of the tissue whence nightmares are woven. Rames was conscious that he made speeches and still more speeches and yet others on the top of those, until speech-making became a pain in the head for which there was no anodyne. He made them from windows--one at that very window where Taylor, the lily fingered democrat, had by a single sentence won immortality and certain defeat--he made them from tables in club-rooms which he no longer recognized; where men, packed tight as herrings, screamed incoherencies in a blaze of light and the atmosphere of a Turkish bath, or standing upon chairs beat him, as he passed beneath them, on the top of the head with their hats in the frenzy of their delight. For two hours Ludsey went stark mad and Harry Rames had reached exhaustion before a gigantic captain of the fire brigade lifted him panting and dishevelled out of the throng, and drawing him into a small committee-room locked the door against his votaries.
"Better wait for a little while here, sir," he said; and it was one o'clock in the morning before he ventured to return to his hotel.