Small as it was, some twenty or thirty of the greater people of Mickleton had crowded into it, and more were coming of those who were to occupy the platform upon this decisive night. But though the hour of half-past eight approached, struck, and went past, Mr. Clay was increasingly anxious to observe that no Mr. Clutterbuck was there. With this exception, all the arrangements he was sure had been businesslike, practical, and thorough, but he could not conceal it from himself that no amount of organising power could make up for the absence of the ex-Member, whom the vast crowd had come to hear; and in his heart he laid that absence down to the irresponsibility and wayward temperament of William Bailey; he noticed also the absence of Mr. Fitzgerald.
In the great shed next door the audience were beginning to stamp their feet, and there were sounds as though their impatience might be dangerous, but Mr. Clay dared not proceed.
Just at the moment when his own patience was breaking, and when he had determined to take the platform at any risk and to carry off the meeting as best he could, Mr. William Bailey swished up in his taximeter, stepped out of it with perfect and exasperating coolness, elbowed his way through the little crowd to Mr. Clay and said:
"Well, Clay, he hasn't turned up, and I don't think he will."
Let those who have the power to construct new words discover one to describe Mr. Clay's interior emotions at the news. The words he used were these:
"I don't understand. Why not? Whose fault is that? Something must be done! You can't do that sort of thing. I do wish it hadn't happened. I'm not a rich man, but I'd give £5! We ought to wait! I really can't conceive—I do wish!" and one or two other pronouncements of the same sort which betrayed not only in their phraseology but in their tone, an alarming perturbation. His face wore a look of intense suffering, and he was in no way calmed by the intermittent roars proceeding from an audience which had now waited over half an hour, and in many of whom enthusiasm was already fermenting into anger.
The larger body of influential people who were to have supported the ex-Member for Mickleton upon the platform were to the full as anxious as their Chairman. Only Mr. Bailey appeared to regard the accident with complete calm. He answered the agitated Clay by suggesting a short excursion on to the platform and an explanation to the audience that their hero had been kidnapped.
Mr. Clay's voice rose as high as a woman's:
"He's been kidnapped!" he screamed.
"No, no, no," said Mr. Bailey, "I didn't say he'd been kidnapped. I said 'let's go and tell the audience he's been kidnapped!' I don't know what's happened to him, and neither do you nor anybody else. Perhaps he's dead; perhaps his motor's broken down. Perhaps he made a mistake about the hour. Perhaps he's gone mad. It's no good speculating; the point is to prevent a riot."