"O, you had better all go back to the breakers," he retorts. "We will see that Metz's body is buried."
Then he pauses, waiting to see the effect his words will produce. On and on comes the tidal wave of humanity. If it is not checked soon it will deluge the palace.
"I will shoot the first man who sets a foot on this piazza," defiantly cries the detective, at the same time drawing his revolver. "Get back to your breakers. If the superintendent sees you on this side of the river, you'll all get sacked," he adds as a threat more terrible than the shooting of one of them.
"We don't want to make trouble," explains O'Neil. "All that we ask is that we may take the body of Metz and give it decent burial. Has the superintendent said we could not have it?"
Mr. Judson, the superintendent of the Giant Breakers, appears at the door. He steps out on the piazza.
A sullen roar greets him.
"Until the coroner has disposed of the case," he begins, "no one will be permitted to touch the body. You have heard my decision. Now go back to your work."
The recollection of the treachery practiced on them in the riot of 1900, when their dead fellow-workmen were put in crates and buried by the police at night, without religious rites, comes to the minds of all. They have sworn then that never again would they be cheated of the right to bury their martyred brothers.
"Give us the body," cry a hundred voices in chorus.
"Go on, go on," shout the pressing thousands. "Go in and get it."