The Man Without a Memory

by Arthur W. Marchmont

But we hadn't a dog's chance of escape. The mother was half an invalid, and could only move very slowly, while the women round, furious at being baulked of their prey and led by the brute I had hit and a couple of his cronies who had come up meanwhile, surged round us like a lot of devils gone mad.

We reached the pavement, however, and as I spied a deepish doorway, I changed my tactics and made for it, treating some of those who stood in the way pretty roughly. We were able to gain the doorway all right, and I hustled my two charges into momentary safety behind me and told the girl to keep hammering at the door till some one opened it, while I tried to keep the crowd back.

It was no picnic; but I reckoned on being able to stem the rush for the minute or so until some one came in reply to the girl's knocking. It was in our favour that the fight we had already put up had rendered some of those in the front of the crowd a little chary about coming too close; and as the doorway was very narrow and the stick I had captured a long one, I put it across the outside, thus forming a useful barrier, and was able to hold it in position by standing back at arm's length, and thus almost out of reach of both the hands and feet of those in front.

To my dismay, however, no attempt was made to let us enter the house, although the girl had kept up an incessant knocking. The mob soon tumbled to this and things began to look ugly. The old lady, scared to death and ill, was on the verge of collapse; the daughter, almost equally panicky and alarmed by her mother's condition, stopped hammering at the door and bent over her; the crowd was getting more furious every moment; those at the back began to push those in front forward, the brute I had struck first came on with the rest, and I came in for some pretty hot smacks and kicks.

But the little barrier of the stick kept off the worst, and, as every second was of vital importance, since help might come from a reinforcement of the police, I took the gruelling and just held on.

A couple more invaluable minutes were gained in this way when another of the men, a dirty little red-haired beggar, more wary than the others, tumbled to the weak spot in my defence—my hold on the stick. He tried his fists on my hands first, and finding that was no good he whipped out a pocket knife and jabbed me with it.

I loosed the right hand and dropped him with a tap on the nose which brought the blood in a stream and gave him something else to think about. But his two companions had seen his little dodge and made ready to flatter it with imitation, so I had to adopt other tactics.

I was pretty reckless by that time, and in no mood to be man-handled by a set of German roughs; so I changed the barrier into a weapon of offence; it made a fine sort of pike with its ironshod end; and I used it without scruple or mercy. I drove it slap into the face of the man who had struck me first, then into the chest of the fellow next him, and lastly downed a third with a crack on the skull.

That accounted for all the men and took off a lot of the edge of the crowd's appetite for more. They fell back a pace or two and I stepped in front of the archway, swung the bludgeon over my head and swore that I'd brain the first person, man or woman, who moved a single foot forward.

Nobody in the front ranks seemed in any hurry to accept the invitation; but again those at the back, who had no knowledge of the happenings, began to shove forward, and slowly the people in front were pushed forward against their will and despite their efforts to resist the pressure.