In her two hands she raised the instrument above her, and with a maniac's force hurled it full at the head of Copernicus Droop.
Instinctively he dodged, and the mass of wood and steel crashed against the door of the chamber, bursting it open and causing the two guards without to fall back.
Droop saw his chance and took it. Turning, with a yell he dashed past the guards and across the antechamber to the main entrance-hall. The Queen, choked with passion, could only gasp and point her hand frantically after the fleeing man, but at once her gentlemen, drawing their swords, rushed in a body from the room with cries of "Treason—treason! Stop him! Catch him!"
Down the main hallway and out into the silent court-yard Droop fled on the wings of fear, pursued by a shouting throng, growing every moment larger.
As he emerged into the yard a sentry tried to stop him, but, with a single side spring, the Yankee eluded this danger and flung himself upon his bicycle, which he found leaning against the palace wall.
"Close the gates! Trap him!" was the cry, and the ponderous iron gates swung together with a clang. But just one second before they closed, the narrow bicycle, with its terror-stricken burden, slipped through into the street beyond and turned sharply to the west, gaining speed every instant. Droop had escaped for the moment, and now bent every effort upon reaching the Panchronicon in safety.
Then, as the tumult of futile chase faded into silence behind the straining fugitive, there might have been seen whirling through the ancient streets of London a weird and wondrous vision.
Perched on a whirl of spokes gleaming in the moonlight, a lean black figure in rumpled hose, with flying cloak, slipped ghostlike through the narrow streets at incredible speed. Many a footpad or belated townsman, warned by the mystic tinkle of a spectral bell, had turned with a start, to faint or run at sight of this uncanny traveller.
His hat was gone and his close-cropped head bent low over the handle-bars. The skin-tight stockings had split from thigh to heel, mud flew from the tires, beplastering the luckless figure from nape to waist, and still, without pause, he pushed onward, ever onward, for London Bridge, for Southwark, and for safety. The way was tortuous, dark and unfamiliar, but it was for life or death, and Copernicus Droop was game.