He whirled about to find a pallid-eyed, slightly vaporish little man staring down at Lady Asquith with baffled concern.
"She just resting?" he inquired thickly, "or did somebody hit her?"
His lordship glanced down at his wife. "She's been struck dead by the fates," he explained pleasantly. "She rather asked for it, you know."
The small man gazed on Lord Asquith with beaming admiration. "That's what I like about you English," he said. "You cover your emotions so well. How do you do it?"
But Lord Asquith didn't answer. Suddenly he was too busy giving vent to an emotion that wasn't even thinly veiled, let alone covered. As he caught sight of the monument pulling away from the earth and bobbing upward like a cork in water, he reached to the street lamp for support.
"Look at that thing leap about!" he gasped.
The little man looked and joined his lordship at the lamp.
"Gord!" he groaned, closing his eyes tightly. "I've had a snootfull in my day, but never anything like this!"
By this time, others along the street had begun to recover sufficiently from the shock of the explosion to notice that something terribly strange was going on in the vicinity of the Whittle monument. A chorused cry of stunned surprise moved, in chain reaction, along the street and rose to a babble of hysteria.