There had been a panic amongst the occupants of the swings; loud and frantic shouts for liberation, for the turn of the wheel, had predominated even over the clamours below in the square. The wheel was as aversely regarded as if it had been the instrument of torture of old by the dizzy wights who clung to their places uttering frenzied appeals for release, for they feared indeed that there was a madman among them. In obedience to the reiterated cries for extrication from their plight the wheel had been revolved as rapidly as practicable, and although the order of precedence among the settees was retained, the position in the periphery at the time of the disaster could not be established, and it was now impossible to say whence had come the stone so quickly flung in the darkness during the rotation of the machine. A number of the swings had already been vacated as soon as the ground was reached, and the occupants of others, to evade testifying or suspicion, leaped out when at a safe distance from the earth and disappeared, mingling indiscriminately with the crowd. Jardine noticed how many of the settees passed by the wicket already empty as the revolving structure brought them within safe descent and he imperatively motioned to Lucia in advance to vacate the swing as soon as the pause at the ground made it possible. The occupant of the swing behind Jardine did not await the stoppage; he was a countryman in a long greyish coat and a wide white flapping hat, and he leaped to the ground in the shadow with a nimble temerity which Jardine thought altogether inconsistent with his slit boots as if bunions troubled his feet, his thick stick, his bent figure and hobbling gait as he made off through the shadows which the intense electric lights served to deepen about the stand. Once he turned and looked back and catching a far glimmer of the light on his half-obscured face he showed two rows of strong white teeth bared in a grin of extreme relish.
Haxon was on the scene in a few minutes, wild with anxiety and asking hither and thither how the disaster had happened. "Where's my partner—if my partner is killed we are all ruined," he declared.
For Lloyd had not divulged his plan of action to annul false suspicion and to evade the aspect of collusion with the moonshiners who had so craftily utilised the presence of the street fair to profitably pursue their illegal traffic.
Haxon showed so definite a determination of detection and reprisal that Jardine, gripping his charges each by the elbow, propelled them through the darkness toward the hotel, demanding through his set teeth by way of explaining his vehemence, "Do you two want to be witnesses in a police court?" But indeed, they were tractable enough as they sped as swiftly as he dared set the pace, that they might not seem in flight, through the half-deserted square, past the vacant hucksters' stands, the shadowy, lifeless tents, the vague equine figures of the merry-go-round, stiff and silent in the claro-obscuro, cutting across the courthouse yard and coming at last to the hotel verandah, almost vacant at this hour.
Lucia was so trembling, pale and shocked that he could not forbear saying, "I hope—I do hope, that this will be a lesson to you," when she burst out laughing; and when Ruth, scarcely less agitated, declared, "For my part I hope, I do hope that that handsome Mr. Lloyd is not killed," Lucia burst into tears.
CHAPTER XIII
Frank came in presently and joined the group, for until the hour for retiring they were monopolising the little blue reception room as a private parlour. He had encouraging news of Lloyd. "He's all right," Frank cheerily averred. "His head has got a lump on it as big as a hen's egg, and it aches to beat the band. The doctor says, though, it is not serious. The stone glanced aside, didn't hit him squarely. If it had he would have been a deader by now. Ought to have seen 'Captain Ollory of the Royal Navy' fairly blubber—he is a good-hearted old kid."
"But what was the motive of the attack?" Mrs. Laniston asked, enjoying every item of the sensation, without the jeopardy and the shock.
"Nobody can imagine," said Frank.
"Some intoxicated wretch," said Jardine disgustedly—he felt as if he would like to be disinfected, fumigated, because of the moral effluvia of such low company—he had never been in such a crowd before in his life.