“I forbid it,” said Graham.
“They have started.”
“I will not have it.”
“No,” said Ostrog. “Sorry as I am to follow the method of the Council—. For your own good—you must not side with disorder. And now that you are here—. It was kind of you to come here.”
Lincoln laid his hand on Graham’s shoulder. Abruptly Graham realized the enormity of his blunder in coming to the Council House. He turned towards the curtains that separated the hall from the antechamber. The clutching hand of Asano intervened. In another moment Lincoln had grasped Graham’s cloak.
He turned and struck at Lincoln’s face, and incontinently a negro had him by collar and arm. He wrenched himself away, his sleeve tore noisily, and he stumbled back, to be tripped by the other attendant. Then he struck the ground heavily and he was staring at the distant ceiling of the hall.
He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant’s leg and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.
Lincoln appeared before him, went down heavily again with a blow under the point of the jaw and lay still. Graham made two strides, stumbled. And then Ostrog’s arm was round his neck, he was pulled over backward, fell heavily, and his arms were pinned to the ground. After a few violent efforts he ceased to struggle and lay staring at Ostrog’s heaving throat.
“You—are—a prisoner,” panted Ostrog, exulting. “You—were rather a fool—to come back.”
Graham turned his head about and perceived through the irregular green window in the walls of the hall the men who had been working the building cranes gesticulating excitedly to the people below them. They had seen!