To him it was an immense relief; it was as though an octopus had loosed its tentacles.
But as the news ran through the town, and was received at first with incredulity and then with consternation, a keen anxiety succeeded to astonishment in the breasts of many—so many of these great people owed him money!
He was assassinated at eight of the clock. By ten in the evening newspapers were issued with the startling intelligence printed in large type. The journals sold by millions; people snatched them from each other’s hands and read them in the streets, in the cabs and carriages, under the noses of the horses, in the lobby and on the terrace of St. Stephen’s.
He had what answers in modern cities to the Triumph of the Romans. The town talked solely of his end.
That evening the Duchess of Otterbourne was dining en intime with a familiar friend at a house in Cadogan Square. They were all congenial and pleasant acquaintances at the little banquet, and after it they sat down to play poker, a game which makes up in excitement what it lacks in intellectuality.
Cadogan Square is somewhat distant from those central haunts where news first circulates, and the poker-players were uninterrupted by the intelligence of the tragedy which was being discussed all around the Parliament House and in the great clubs of the West. They neither heard it by telephone, or by the shouting of newsboys, and when at midnight a young nephew of the hostess, who was also a member of the Conservative party, came into the drawing-room he saw at a glance that the tidings he had brought with him had not been forestalled.
“Oh, I say!” he cried, as he came up behind his aunt’s chair. “Oh, I say! Such a piece of news! Who do you think has been shot?”
The players went on with their game unheeding.
“Don’t bother, Dick!” said the lady of the house. “Who cares who’s shot?”
“Somebody in Ireland, of course,” said another lady, with impatience, “Somebody at the Castle?”