And some moments later the face of Frankl, who bore a candle, looked in at the door.
“Is that all right, Alfie?”—in the weakest whisper.
“Come on in, and don't ask any questions”, said Harris.
Frankl entered, peered upon the dead visage of the priest; then, the detectives being now behind the parlour-door below, with handcuffs, rose to run to summon them: but, to his horror, Harris was now before the door; he saw in the candlelight those eyes of Alfie fixed upon him: and he knew: before the least threat or movement by Harris, the Jew sent to Heaven a piercing shriek, his hour come....
“...dirty-livered Jew...” striking in the breast, and, as Frankl fell, he gave him one other in the temple, with “Down, down to hell, and sye I sent thee thither”; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the cheek, with “Go up, thou bald-head, it is”: all in two seconds' space; and he was now about to turn anew to hack at Frankl, when his keen ear heard a creak; and he sprang up a spinning motionlessness—the Reality before him.
And instantly on the realization of that fact, he was submissive, reverent, as before the very Helmet of Pallas, goddess of Blue; and said he with sullen dejection, reverent of the Helmet, but easy with the man: “All right: you've beat me...I suppose it's that Regent-stabbing affair brought you: it was I did it all right”.
When they went down, almost from the door a crowd gathered, pressing close, Harris' hands and front all red from O'Hara's throat; and when one policeman, big with the fact, whispered a gentleman: “You may have heard, sir, that the Regent was stabbed to-day—it's been kept precious dark, but the fact's so: this is the beauty as done it”, like loosened effluvia that news flew—but distorted, largened—the stains were Regent's blood!—and beyond measure had the crowd spread ere it reached the Edgware Road.
There at the corner, as the officers looked about for a cab, and one blew a whistle, a man reached out and fiercely struck Harris on the face, while another shouted: “Lynch the beggar!”; and now arose a hustling, huddled impulses, and now in full vogue that grave noising of congregations when the voice of God jogs them; while Harris, excessively pallid, handcuffed, began to whistle; a number of other police now seeking the crowd's centre, but with difficulty; a cab, too, slowly making a way which closed like water round it: and when this had nearly reached him, Harris, in his eagerness to get in, sprang far toward it—and slipped. He never rose again: the crowd rolled over his last howl, and in the midst of a great row as of hounds, trampled him to a paste.
About that very time that better man whom he had stabbed, in tying up in bed a bundle of old papers, was saying: “Yes, I will go to my people”....
And by six A.M. he was up, in his study, dressed, looking quite owlish with his excess of eyes, which, however, danced at the first news of the morning—the arrival at Portsmouth of the Boodah II., which had raced like a carrier-bird since 8.30 P.M. of the 29th, full of the news of the vanished Mahomet: on her being 200 marines.