The press immediately in front of Clive Standish slackened and the crowd opened. In its centre reeled a horrible figure—bloodstained, torn of clothing, raging and distorted of face, one hand nursing an unshaven jaw, while the other flourished a revolver.
“Lemme at ’im!” mumbled the pain-maddened tough through a hedge of splintered teeth. “Clear the way or I’ll shoot to clear!”
Then, finding himself directly in front of Standish, the maniac halted and levelled his weapon.
Something swished through the air from behind Clive’s head. A big shapeless object hurtled forward and smote the broken-jawed tough full across the eyes on the very instant he fired at point-blank range.
The ball went wild, and surprise at the odd blow he had received (apparently from nowhere), caused the man’s pistol to clatter to the ground.
The girl in the box—innocent cause of the whole battle—had paid her debt to the man who had imperilled his life in her defence. She had crouched, trembling, in the background watching the progress of the fray. But as the intended murderer’s trigger-finger had tightened, she had hurled at his face, with all her frail force, the huge bouquet she carried. For once a woman’s aim was unerring, and thereby a man’s life was saved.
Her act—melodramatic, amazing, unlooked-for, eccentric in its poetic justice and theatric effects—sent a roar of applause from the onlookers, even as the pistol-shot momentarily startled the group of ruffians into sanity. Clive, without awaiting the result of the shot, had flung himself upon the little knot of toughs who were locked in death-grip about Ansel.
But even as he did so, a cry of warning rang from a dozen parts of the big building:
“The cops! Lights out! The cops!”
The hastily-summoned cohort of blue-coated reserves, pistols and nightsticks drawn, charged down the centre aisle. And before their onset the rabble melted like snow in April.