The girl stamped her satin-shod foot impatiently.
“Don't be silly,” she expostulated. “You know I promised Clara we'd be there early.”
“All very well,” the young man grumbled, “but what can we do? We shall have to wait our turn.”
“Why can't you slip out and look for a taxi yourself?” she suggested. “Do, Victor,” she added, squeezing his arm. “You're so clever at picking them up.”
He made a little grimace, but lit a cigarette and turned up his coat collar.
“I'll do my best,” he promised. “Don't go on without me.”
“Try up towards Charing Cross Road, not the other way,” she advised earnestly.
“Right-oh!” he replied, which illuminative form of assent, a word spoken as he plunged unwillingly into the thick obscurity on the other side of the revolving doors, was probably the last he ever uttered on earth.
Left alone, the girl began to shiver, as though suddenly cold. She turned around and glanced hurriedly back into the restaurant. At that moment she met the steady, questioning scrutiny of Francis' eyes. She stood as though transfixed. Then came the sound which every one talked of for months afterwards, the sound which no one who heard it ever forgot—the death cry of Victor Bidlake, followed a second afterwards by a muffled report. A strain of frenzied surprise seemed mingled with the horror. Afterwards, silence.
There was the sound of some commotion outside, the sound of hurried footsteps and agitated voices. Then a terrible little procession appeared. Something—it seemed to be a shapeless heap of clothes—was carried in and laid upon the floor, in the little space between the revolving doors and the inner entrance. Two blue-liveried attendants kept back the horrified but curious crowd. Francis, vaguely recognised as being somehow or other connected with the law, was one of the few people allowed to remain whilst a doctor, fetched out from the dancing-room, kneeled over the prostrate form. He felt that he knew beforehand the horrible verdict which the latter whispered in his ear after his brief examination.