"Move along here, please. Move on. Move on."
Again the street is packed with emotional humanity. But what a different scene is this, although in its essentials so similar. For every face is flushed with excitement—joyful excitement. As once before, they press eagerly on toward the bank entrance; but this morning the doors are open. Almost every member of that crushed and crushing assembly holds a copy of the morning paper. Every man and every woman in the crowd knows that the missing financiers have declined, firmly, to afford any information whatever respecting their strange adventure—that they have refused, all four of them, point blank either to substantiate or to deny the sensational story of Messrs. Macready and Murray. "The incident is closed," Baron Hague is reported as declaring. But what care the depositors of the Chancery Legal Incorporated? For is it not announced, also, that this quartet of public benefactors, with a fifth philanthropist (who modestly remains anonymous) have put up between them no less a sum than three and a half million pounds to salve the wrecked bank?
"By your leave. Make way here. Stand back, if you please."
Someone starts a cheer, and it is feverishly taken up by the highly wrought throng, as an escorted van pulls slowly through the crowd. It is bullion from the Bank of England. Good red gold and crisp notes. It is dead hopes raised from the dust; happiness reborn, like a ph[oe]nix from the ashes of misery.
"Hip, hip, hip, hooray!"
Again and again, and yet again that joyous cheer awakes the echoes of the ancient Inns.
It was as a final cheer died away that Haredale, on the rim of the throng, felt himself tapped upon the shoulder.
He turned a flushed face and saw a tall man, irreproachably attired, standing smiling at his elbow. The large eyes, with their compelling light of command, held nothing now but a command to friendship.
"Séverac Bablon!"
"Well, Haredale!" The musical voice made itself audible above all the din. "These good people would rejoice to know the name of that anonymous friend who, with four other disinterested philanthropists, has sought to bring a little gladness into a grey world. Here am I. And there, on the bank steps, are police. Make your decision. Either give me in charge or give me your hand."