"What people!" the girl exclaimed scornfully. "Where are the police?"
"Don't speak so loud," Sommers answered impatiently, "if you wish to escape insult. There the police are, over there by the park. They don't seem especially interested."
The girl closed her lips tightly and followed Sommers. It was no easy task to penetrate the hot, sweating mob that was packing into the court, and bearing down toward the tracks where the fun was going on. Sommers made three feet, then lost two. The crowd seemed especially anxious to keep them back, and Miss Hitchcock was hustled and pushed roughly hither and thither until she grasped Sommers's coat with trembling hands. A fleshy man, with a dirty two weeks' beard on his tanned face, shoved Sommers back with a brutal laugh. Sommers pushed him off. In a moment fists were up, the young doctor's hat was knocked off, and some one threw a stone that he received on his cheek.
Sommers turned, grasped the girl with one arm, and threw himself and her upon the more yielding corner of the press. Then he dragged his companion for a few steps until the jam slackened at the open door of a saloon. Into this the two were pushed by the eddying mob, and escaped. For a moment they stood against the bar that protected the window. The saloon was full of men, foul with tobacco smoke, and the floor was filthy. Flies sluggishly buzzed about the pools of beer on the bar counter. The men were talking excitedly; a few thin, ragged hangers-on were looting the free-lunch dishes surreptitiously. Miss Hitchcock's face expressed her disgust, but she said nothing. She had learned her lesson.
"Wait here," Sommers ordered, "while I find out whether we can get out of this by a back door."
He spoke to the barkeeper, who lethargically jerked a thumb over his shoulder. They elbowed their way across the room, Miss Hitchcock rather ostentatiously drawing up her skirts and threading her way among the pools of the dirty floor. The occupants of the bar-room, however, gave the strangers only slight attention. The heavy atmosphere of smoke and beer, heated to the boiling point by the afternoon sun, seemed to have soddened their senses. Behind the bar the two found a passage to the alley in the rear, which led by a cross alley into a deserted street. Finally they emerged on the placid boulevard.
"Your face is bleeding!" Miss Hitchcock exclaimed. "Are you hurt?"
"No," Sommers answered, mopping his brow and settling his collar. "They were good enough to spare the eye."
"Brutes!"
"I wouldn't say that," her companion interrupted sharply. "We are all brutes each in our way," he added quietly.