Salt looked through a crevice of the iron curtain, and listened long enough to learn that there was no one on the upper steps; for the upper steps, indeed, commanded no view of the windows, and the windows were the centres of all interest. Satisfied on this point, he quietly unlocked the door and stepped out.
CHAPTER XX
STOBALT OF SALAVEIRA
To the majority of those who thronged Seaton Street the effect of Salt's sudden—instantaneous, as it seemed—and unexpected appearance was to endow it with a dramatic, almost an uncanny, value. The front rows, especially those standing about the steps, fell back, and the further rows pressed forward. And because an undisciplined mob stricken by acute surprise must express its emotion outwardly—by silence if it has hitherto been noisy, and by exclamation if it has been silent—the shouts and turmoil in the street instantly dwindled away to nothing, like a breath of vapour passing from a window pane.
Salt raised his hand, and he had the tribute of unstirring silence, the silence for the moment of blank astonishment.
"My friends and enemies," he said, in a voice that had learned self-possession from the same school that Demosthenes had practised in, "you have been calling me for some time. In a few minutes I must listen to whatever you have to say, but first there is another matter that we must arrange. I take it for granted that when you began your spirited demonstration here you had no idea that there was a lady in the building. Not being accustomed to the sterner side of politics, so formidable a display rather disconcerted her, and not knowing the invariable chivalry of English working men, she hesitated to come out before. Now, as it is dark, and the streets of London are not what they once were, I want half a dozen good stout fellows to see the lady safely to her home."
"Be damned!" growled a voice among the mass. "What do you take us for?"
"Men," retorted Salt incisively; "or there would be no use in asking you."
"Yes, men, but famished, desperate, werewolf men," cried a poor, gaunt creature clad in grotesque rags, who stood near. "Men who have seen our women starve and sink before our eyes; men who have watched our children dying by a slower, crooler death than fire. An eye for an eye, tyrant! Your League has struck at our women folk through us."