He strode on for a long, long time—half an hour? an hour?—heedless of direction, turning corners aimlessly, until at last he was walking up a street down which, toward him, people were flowing in groups, talking loudly. The show was over, no doubt, the audience dispersing.
He heard excited comments. “The nigger got his, all right!”—“Damn shame about the mayor!”—“Oh, I dunno! Too damn fresh!”
Stacey whirled about and caught the man who had said it was a shame. “Did they kill the mayor?” he demanded.
The man addressed stared, open-mouthed, with frightened eyes at Stacey’s stern face. “N-no!” he stammered. “They hung him up tw-twice, but he was—was cut down. He’s all right, I guess. Th-they got him away. I said it was a damned shame,” he added weakly, trying to release himself from Stacey’s grasp.
Stacey did not reply, but withdrew his hand and strode on, his teeth set.
Again he walked aimlessly for a long while, but at last, making a wide curve, he turned back toward the noise that still came in broken waves from the riot centre.
Finally, led by the glow of the fire, he approached the court-house once more, but now from the north. On this side it was not flush with the street but set in some fifty yards behind an ornamental grass-plot.
Street, grass-plot and curving walks were covered with a howling throng, not so thick as to prevent passage, but rushing wildly this way and that under the red light from the burning building.
The centre of the confusion Stacey presently made out to be a motor car careering about through the crowd, that shouted exultantly and stumbled back out of its path.
All at once it bore down on Stacey. He sprang aside to avoid it, then, looking back, saw that after it, at the end of a rope, trailed a shapeless bumping object.