"Two-thirty," he answered back, and was gone round the corner.
"Right," she yodled. "I'll be there."
CHAPTER XXIX
FOLLOW YOUR LEADER
Philip Blackburn's meeting had not been advertised, for it was only in the small hours of the morning that a motor-bicyclist scaring the hares and herons in the marshes, had brought the news from Labour Headquarters that P.B. was bearing the Fiery Cross to Beachbourne in the course of a whirlwind pilgrimage of the Southern Counties. But the hall was crammed.
Philip Blackburn was a sure draw at any time. A Labour M.P. and stalwart of the Independent Labour Party, it was often said that he was destined to be the Robespierre of the new movement. Certainly he was an incorruptible. A cripple from his youth, and a fanatic, with the face of a Savonarola, in the House and on the platform he asked no quarter and gave none.
Half an hour later the dusty Ford car which bore the fighting pacifist was signalled panting down Stone Cross hill over the Levels: a half-hour the audience passed singing God save the People and The Red Flag.
A few minutes later he came limping on to the platform: a little man, of the black-coated proletariat obviously, with the face of a steel blade, keen and fine, and far-removed from the burly labour agitator, hoarse of voice, and raw of face, of a previous generation. His reception was impressively quiet. The man's personality, his courage, his errand, the occasion, awed even the most boisterous.
He looked dead-beat, admitted as much, and apologised for being late.
"You know where I come from (cheers) and where I'm bound for to-night. And you know what I've come about—Is it Peace or War?"