"Wanted in, did ya? Now yer in, what about it?"
What about it, indeed? In Bill's prisoner, as he stood there twitching ineffectually against that obstinate hold, breathing loud, shakily settling his clothes, we had, robe for robe, cap for cap, a duplicate Emperor of China!
And the next moment, this figure took off its mask and showed the face of Bronson Vandeman.
Dead silence all about us; Capehart loosened his grip, abashed but still truculent.
"Dang it all, Mr. Vandeman, if you didn't want to get mussed up, what made you fight like that?"
"Fight?" Vandeman found his voice. "Who wouldn't? I was late, and you—"
"Bron!" After one desperate glance toward the girl up on the platform, Ina ran to him and put a hand on his arm. "They stopped the march.... Your—the—they spoiled our joke. But have them start the music again. You're here now. Let's go on with the march ... explain afterward."
"Good business!" Vandeman filled his chest, glanced across at Fong Ling, and gave his social circle a rather poor version of the usual white-toothed smile. "Jokes can wait—especially busted ones. On with the dance; let joy be unrefined!"
Sidelong, I saw the orchestra leader's baton go up. But no music followed. It was at Barbara the baton had pointed, at Barbara that all the crowded company stared. Her little white dress clung to her slender figure. I saw that now she was in the strange Buddha pose. A few flecks of silver paper, still in her black hair, made it sparkle. But it was Barbara's eyes that held us all spellbound. In her colorless face those wonderful openings of black light seemed to look through and beyond us. For an instant there was no stir. Hundreds of faces set toward her, held by the wonder of her. Fong Ling's yellow visage moved for the first time from its immobility with a sort of awe, a dread. And when my gaze came back to her, I noticed that, with the dropping of her hands to join the finger-tips, she had left, where that little, pressing fist had been, a blur of red on the white sweater. Over me it rushed with the force of calamity, she had been wounded when she sank down back there in the crowd. It was a shot—not a giant cracker—we had heard.
"Vandeman," I whirled on him, "You shot this girl. You tried to kill her."