“Oh, no!” Jane laughed. “The great thing is to let them think everything’s all right. And then, when they’re getting careless, let go at them full bang with a beautiful surprise. There’ll be a chance of getting away like that. I believe there are a hundred and fifty stewards in the meeting, and they’ll every one be quite useless.”
At intervals a muffled roar issued from the Imperial Hall, despite the fact that the windows were closely shut.
In due time Jane Foley quietly rose from the table, and Audrey did likewise. All around them stretched the imposing blue architecture of the Exhibition, forming vistas that ended dimly either in the smoke of Birmingham or the rustic haze of Worcestershire. And, although the Imperial Hall was crammed, every vista was thickly powdered with pleasure-seekers and probably pleasure-finders. Bands played. Flags waved. Brass glinted. Even the sun feebly shone at intervals through the eternal canopy of soot. It was a great day in the annals of the Blue City and of Liberalism.
And Jane Foley and Audrey turned their backs upon all that, and—Jane concealing her limp as much as possible—sauntered with affected nonchalance towards the precincts of the Joy Wheel enclosure. Audrey was inexpressibly uplifted. She felt as if she had stepped straight into romance. And she was right—she had stepped into the most vivid romance of the modern age, into a world of disguises, flights, pursuits, chicane, inconceivable adventures, ideals, martyrs and conquerors, which only the Renaissance or the twenty-first century could appreciate.
“Lend me that, will you?” said Jane persuasively to the man with the megaphone at the entrance to the enclosure.
He was, quite properly, a very loud man, with a loud thick voice, a loud purple face, and a loud grey suit. To Audrey’s astonishment, he smiled and winked, and gave up the megaphone at once.
Audrey paid sixpence at the turnstile, admittance for two persons, and they were within the temple, which had a roof like an umbrella over the central, revolving portion of it, but which was somewhat open to the skies around the rim. There were two concentric enclosing walls, the inner one was unscalable, and the outer one about five feet six inches high. A second loud man was calling out: “Couples please. Ladies and gentlemen. Couples if you please.” Obediently, numbers of the crowd disposed themselves in pairs in the attitudes of close affection on the circling floor which had just come to rest, while the remainder of the numerous gathering gazed upon them with sarcastic ecstasy. Then the wheel began slowly to turn, and girls to shriek in the plenitude of happiness. And progress was proved geometrically.
Jane, bearing the megaphone, slipped by an aperture into the space between the two walls, and Audrey followed. Nobody gave attention to them except the second loud man, who winked the wink of knowledge. The fact was that both the loud men, being unalterable Tories, had been very willing to connive at Jane Foley’s scheme for the affliction of a Radical Minister.
The two girls over the wall had an excellent and appetising view of the upper part of the side of the Imperial Hall, and of its high windows, the nearest of which was scarcely thirty feet away.
“Hold this, will you?” said Jane, handing the megaphone to Audrey.