The Duke of Perse leaped from his carriage and ran forward, shouting to the soldiers to seize the disturbers. Panic seized the crowd. There was a mad rush for the corner above. Olga Platanova stood alone, her eyes wide and glassy, staring as if petrified at the face of Truxton King.
He saw the object in her wavering hand. With a yell he dashed for safety down the seething avenue. The Duke of Perse struck at him as he passed, ignoring the frantic cry of warning that he uttered. A plain, white-faced farmer in a smock of blue was crossing the street with mighty bounds, his eyes glued upon the arm of the frail, terrified anarchist. If he could only arrest that palsied, uncertain arm!
But she hurled the bomb, her hands going to her eyes as she fell upon her knees.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE THROWING OF THE BOMB
The scene that followed beggars all powers of description.
A score of men and horses lay writhing in the street; others crept away screaming with pain; human flesh and that of animals lay in the path of the frenzied, panic-stricken holiday crowd; blood mingled with the soft mud of Regengetz Circus, slimy, slippery, ugly!
Rent bodies of men in once gaudy uniforms, now flattened and bruised in warm, oozy death, were piled in a mass where but a moment before the wondering vanguard of troopers had clustered. For many rods in all directions stunned creatures were struggling to their feet after the stupendous shock that had felled them. The clattering of frightened horses, the shouts and screams of men and women, the gruesome rush of ten thousand people in stampede—all in twenty seconds after the engine of death left the hand of Olga Platanova.
Olga Platanova! There was nothing left of her! She had failed to do the deed expected of her, but she would not hear the execrations of those who had depended upon her to kill the Prince. We draw a veil across the picture of Olga Platanova after the bomb left her hand; no one may look upon the quivering, shattered thing that once was a living, beautiful woman. The glimpse she had of Truxton King's haggard face unnerved her. She faltered, her strength of will collapsed; she hurled the bomb in a panic of indecision. Massacre but not conquest!