There, calmly standing on the piano and leaning against the wall, was Foley, his left hand in his trousers pocket, his right uplifted to command attention.
"Boys, I feel it sorter embarrassin' to interrupt your little entertainment like this," he began blandly, but breathing very heavily. "But I suppose I won't have many more chances to make speeches before youse, an' I want to make about a remark an' a half. What's past—well, youse know. But what I got to say about the future is all on the level. Go in an' beat the contractors! Youse can beat 'em. An' beat 'em like hell!"
He paused, and gave an almost imperceptible glance toward an open window a few feet away, and moved a step nearer it. A look of baiting defiance came over his face, and he went on: "As for youse fellows. The whole crowd o' youse just tried to do me up—a thousand or two again' one. I fooled the whole bunch o' youse once. An' I can lick the whole bunch o' youse, too!—one at a time. But not just now!"
With his last word he sprang across to the sill of the open window, five feet away. Tom had noted Foley's glance and his edging toward the window, and guessing that Foley contemplated some new move, he had held himself in readiness for anything. He sprang after Foley, thinking the walking delegate meant to leap to his death on the stone-paved court below, and threw his arms about the other's knees. In the instant of embracing he noticed a fire-escape landing across the narrow court, an easy jump—and he knew that Foley had had no thought of death.
As Tom jerked Foley from the window sill he tripped over a chair and fell backward to the floor, the walking delegate's body upon him. Foley was on his feet in an instant, but Tom lay where he was with the breath knocked out of him. He dimly heard the union break again into cries; feet trampled him; he felt a keen shooting pain. Then he was conscious that some force was turning the edge of the mob from its path; then he was lifted up and placed at the window out of which he had just dragged Foley; and then, Petersen's arm supporting him, he stood weakly on one foot holding to the sill.
For an instant he had a glimpse of Foley, on the platform, his back to the wall. During the minute Tom had been on the floor a group of Foley's roughs, moved by some strange reawakening of loyalty, had rushed to his aid, but they had gone down; and now Foley stood alone, behind a table, sneering at the crowd.
"Come on!" he shouted, with something between a snarl and a laugh, shaking his clenched fist. "Come on, one at a time, an' I'll do up every one o' youse!"
The next instant he went down, and at the spot where he sank the crowd swayed and writhed as the vortex of a whirlpool. Tom, sickened, turned his eyes away.
Turned them to see three policemen and two men in plain clothes with badges on their lapels enter the hall, stand an instant taking in the scene, and then with drawn clubs plunge forward into the crowd. The cry of "Police!" swept from the rear to the front of the hall.
"We're after Foley!" shouted the foremost officer, a huge fellow with a huge voice, by way of explanation. "Get out o' the way!"