At the head of the stairs she met the Pantaloon, beardless, with startled eyes, who waved her back.
“Don’t come down on the stage for a minute, Miss O’Finn. There’s been an accident. He was caught in the star-trap. The spring must have broken.”
“Bram....”
He nodded, and burst into tears.
Nancy hurried past him toward the stage. Beyond the dropped curtain she could hear the murmur of the anxious and affrighted audience. Bram was lying beside the closed trap, the pointed sections of which were red.
“There isn’t a doctor in the whole audience,” Worsley was saying. “But several people have run to fetch one. How do you feel now, old man?”
Nancy pushed her way through the staring group, and knelt beside Bram, now unconscious, a bloody belt round his white dress, his head pillowed on the string of sausages.
“My precious one,” she cried. “Oh, my precious one!”
His eyelids flickered at her voice, and his limp body quivered very faintly.
“A doctor will be here in a minute, Miss O’Finn,” Worsley said.