Betty was standing up in the tonneau. Her hands were clasped before her breast, her face was set. She saw him falling toward her.
Luke jumped beside her, his coat gone, his shirt torn, his face bleeding from a cut above the right eye, his hair matted over his forehead. She did not know him as he seized her roughly and picked her up in his arms; but, in the moment that he balanced on the edge of the car, with the light full in his face, the crowd knew him.
"That's him! That's Huber!" they shrieked.
He jumped with her directly back into the crowd.
While he was still in the air, he thought that was the worst thing to have done. Without him, she might have had some chance; with him she would have almost no chance at all. But it was too late now; he could only fight until he could fight no more, and then they must die together....
§6. They did not die. Somebody, as the mob laid hold of them, broke through its ranks—somebody with still some shred of authority left him.
"Get back, you fools! Get back! Do you want to kill the woman?"
It was that organizer of the strikers whom Luke had seen in Forbes's office when the employees made their last appeal to Forbes. It was the man Forbes had ignored.
With infinite slowness, against infinite opposition, the rescuer made way for them. Grumbling, growling, threatening, the crowd fell back. It menaced, it cursed, it hurled ribald jokes; but it fell back before the leader that it no longer obeyed in anything else, until he, followed by Luke with Betty in his arms, came to the line of soldiers at the battered factory door.
Luke swayed a little. Facciolati stepped up and tried to steady him, but he tossed Facciolati away. Luke turned to the organizer.