Prying cautiously among the tightly banked flowers, my blood quickened as I touched something round and hard, a thing about the size of a large orange, fastened into the centre of the pyramid by a network of thin wire. Intuition had not played me a trick. There was death in this bunch of roses, death for many, perhaps. Though it was of first importance to get the bomb as far away as possible from the King and from Monica, and to render it harmless, I would not give up my pursuit of the man in the black coat, who was fighting his way through the crowd, only a few yards in front of me,—a square-set figure, in the holiday clothes of a respectable workman. I saw only his back now, every muscle tense in his desire to escape the vengeance on his track; but I had seen his face for an instant, and could identify it anywhere.
[pg 251] What if, in his desperation, he turned, and in the hope of saving himself accused me of the crime he would have committed? It but needed that to ruin me—after Barcelona, and this long journey to Seville, where the King was due. Would any explanation I might make be credited, when the bomb was in my hand?
I pushed the crowding thoughts out of my mind. There were other things to think of—the bomb itself, what to do with it; and the man to be followed.
Meanwhile I was moving on after that broad back of which I must not lose sight, and away from the neighbourhood of the royal box. I was in the lane of the procession, close in front of the long ranks of occupied chairs, and opposite the tribune. There were only two persons abreast in the moving line which carried me along, driven on by the police, but we were tightly packed, pressed against on one side by the knees of people in the chairs, on the other by the purple brotherhood preceding another paso. The situation seemed desperate, since to give an alarm would endanger the crowd as well as jeopardize my future; and a panic would be a calamity.
Suddenly the cry of a water-seller struck my ear sharply. “Agua!—clear as crystal and cold as mountain snow. Agua!”
He was just before me with his earthen vessel. “Sell me your jar,” I said. “No, I don't want a glass of water. I want the jar—for a curiosity. Twenty pesetas for it.”
This offer saved questionings. The vessel with its contents was worth two pesetas to the vendor, perhaps, and, lest I should change my mind, its owner hastily handed over his jar and pocketed my silver. Even now I had to wait for an opening in the throng, till I had been pushed on as far as the lane leading from the square to the Plaza de San Fernando; and there, to my joy, I jostled against Ropes. Without a word of explanation, I said, “Follow that man in the cloth cap with the black coat and red tie. Get hold of him; take care he doesn't knife or shoot you. Don't let him go—and wait for me.”
This was all Ropes needed. “Right, sir,” said he, and forged [pg 252]after the black back, which in this freer space was gaining distance.
Unexpectedly relieved of my second task, carefully shielding the bouquet with the water-jar I worked my way into the lane, and struck the head of the earthen vessel against a stone coping.
The porous clay cracked like an egg-shell, the top coming off in one piece, with a few flying splinters; and I pressed the bouquet deep into the water.