In this rising tide of excitement, a taxi driver, unaware that he had gotten himself caught in anything more than an after theatre jam, directed his vehicle into the square, proceeded to the center, then glanced out the window to signal for a turn around the monument. He glanced, looked away, then glanced again. He shoved the whole upper portion of his body out the window and stared with blinking incredulity at the rising monument. He forgot completely about the taxi and the lady passenger in the back.
A greater scream rose through the crowd as the taxi toured complacently across the square, over the sidewalk, and lodged itself crashingly in the aquarium fitted window of a seafood restaurant. The driver remained oblivious to all but the uprooted monument, even as the windshield gave way before a deluge of salt water and flopping fish. Not so, however, his passenger who suddenly found herself staring nose to nose with a gimlet-eyed mackerel, who was peering up at her rather evilly from inside the front of her dress.
With a scream that echoed to the very heavens, the lady hurled back the door of the taxi and leaped to the sidewalk. There, before an enchanted group of onlookers, she began to clutch at herself with all the mad frenzy of a native dancer engaged in ceremonial rites dedicated to the god of human fertility. Reaching low within her dress, she withdrew the floundering fish and hurled it from her with a vengeance.
The fish looped high through the air and landed neatly on the thin chest of the still unconscious Lady Asquith. Her ladyship, however, had apparently been lying at her husband's feet, just waiting for a fish to take to her bosom. No sooner did the mackerel arrive, than she made a small whimpering sound and sat up. The fish dropped soggily to her lap. Her ladyship looked down at the fish, and it in turn looked up at her. Then with an exchange of horrified shudders, fish and lady simultaneously flopped over to their sides and lay inert.
Through the babbling crowd, two officers arrived on the scene in a manner of great haste. Running to the front of the crowd, they stopped, observed the rising monument with a start, and exchanged looks of complete confusion.
"Lord a'mighty!" the first cop exclaimed. "The thing's gone and pulled itself up by the roots!"
"I can't look," the second cop said, turning away. "It fair makes my skin crawl!"
"What can we do? We ought to take steps."
"There's a good idea," the second cop said fervently. "Let's get out of here. Let's run!"
"In front of all these people?"