The library was in a wing of the mansion, far from the street, and the three persons behind the screen had been entirely absorbed in their troubled affairs. They had heard none of the sounds from the street.
Somebody began to call in the corridor outside the library. The voice sounded above the music from the ballroom, and quavered with anxious entreaty as it demanded, over and over: "Senator Corson! Where are you, Senator Corson?"
"Here!" replied the Senator.
The secretary rushed in. "There's a mob outside, sir! A threatening mob!"
"Ah! Morrison, your friends are looking you up!"
"They are radicals—anarchists. They must be!" panted the messenger. "They are yelling: 'Down with the capitalists! Down with the aristocrats!' I ordered the shades pulled. The men seemed to be excited by looking in through the windows at the dancers in the ballroom!"
"There'll be no trouble. I'll answer for that," promised the Mayor, marching away.
Before he reached the door the crash of splintered glass, the screams of women and shouts of men; drowned the music.
Stewart went leaping down the stairs. When he reached the ballroom he found the frightened guests massed against the wall, as far from the windows as they could crowd. A wild battle of some sort was going on outside in the night, so oaths and cries and the grim thudding of battering fists revealed.
Before Stewart could reach a window—one of those from which the glass had been broken—Commander Lanigan came through the aperture with a rush, skating to a standstill along the polished floor. Blood was on his hands. His sleeves hung in ribbons. In that scene of suspended gaiety he was a particularly grisly interloper.