"If that was one of my men——" shouted Mr. Clay—but he got no farther. To the protests which were now rising from the greater part of the audience, were added inconsequent songs raised by mere rowdies, and to add to the confusion a free fight began in the south-eastern corner of the room between two gentlemen who were of the same opinion, but of whom each had completely misunderstood the attitude of the other upon the subject to which the evening was to have been devoted. The diversion afforded by this conflict attracted a larger and a larger number of champions upon both sides, and suddenly, for no apparent reason and prompted only by that brutish instinct which will often seize upon a mob when it gets out of hand, a considerable body of the electors present broke and surged towards the Platform.
The Platform in its turn attempted to go out, but the single door of issue so considerably impeded their determined efforts that their rear, if I may so express myself, was hopelessly outflanked by their assailants long before the communications of the retreat had been properly organised. It cannot be denied that Mr. Alderman Thorne made a good fight of it for a man of his age and dimensions, and at the very moment when Mrs. Battersby, emitting piercing shrieks, was being squeezed sideways through the door, he was observed planting his fist with some vigour into the face of one of his own colleagues whom he had mistaken for the enemy.
Mr. Clay, who was quite unused to other combat than that of religious debate, improvised a defence with a chair, the legs of which he pushed back and forth rapidly with such considerable effect as to permit him to abandon his post almost the last and without a wound.
As for Mr. Bailey, he took refuge in his mere height; he retreated somewhat to the back of the platform, stood up, surveyed the swaying tangle of struggling men. He was pleased to note that the sound tradition which forbids men of inferior reach and weight to engage in coarse physical contest, spared him the active exertions necessary to so many of his friends. When he saw, or thought he saw, that the last of these as they backed towards the door were in danger of ill-treatment, he elbowed his way without much resistance in their direction, and with some good humour pushed aside the first rank of their assailants.
Meanwhile the platform was completely covered with the victorious band who had stormed it; the moment was propitious for the entry of the police, who had been telephoned for from the ante-room; ten of these stalwart fellows marched in with military precision, and by their vigorous efforts prevented any further ingress to the platform which they erroneously supposed they had come in time to defend.
Mr. Bailey, shuffling out into the street in the midst of his still heated neighbours, thought it would be entertaining to approach the main door and to hear the opinion of the electorate. He was not disappointed. When the last of them had come out and when he had managed to explain himself to the police, who were all for making him their unique prisoner, he walked slowly homewards, meditating upon the forces of the modern world and imagining doubtless a hundred hare-brained theories to account for the very simple accident which had befallen the unfortunate Clutterbuck. To his diseased mind there seemed no third explanation beyond kidnapping and blackmail; and when he considered the shortness of the time available for the discovery of Mr. Clutterbuck's foibles, his futile judgment had determined à priori and without a shadow of proof, that as Mr. Clutterbuck could not have been blackmailed, Mr. Clutterbuck had been spirited away.
Next morning, between eleven and twelve, William Bailey lay in bed amusing himself by reading for once a whole batch of Sunday papers, for all of which he had just despatched Zachary to a large agent.
The ridiculous fellow was drawing up a memorandum, annotated with queries and remarks of the most fantastic kind, upon the names of the proprietors, the careers of the editors and the reasons each might have for giving his particular version of the affair. He noted what percentage mentioned the meeting at all; the adjectives used with regard to each: the motives ascribed to its promoters and to the indignation of the audience. The fact that the Observer had no space to mention the ridiculous bagarre he put down, as my readers may well imagine, to some dark and mysterious conspiracy connected with the Hebrew people. The fact that of those who mentioned it only two alluded vaguely to the Ruby Mines and none to the Duke of Battersea he ascribed, of course, not to the very natural reason that these details could not concern the general public, but to what he was pleased to term "corruption." And altogether his disappointment at the result of the evening before, though it was a result which he had more than half expected, was amply made up for by his perverted pleasure in the contemplation of that next morning's Press.
He was in such a mood and ready for any false assumption or for any wicked slander, when a telegram was brought him. He opened it. It was from Stow-in-the-Wold; it begged Mr. Bailey to explain if possible and to make things right if it was not too late. Unfortunately within the narrow limits of such a message it was impossible to give the nature of the accident that had happened, and William Bailey's most foolish suppositions were only the more confirmed.