The library was in a wing of the mansion, far from the street, and the three persons behind the screen had been entirely absorbed in their troubled affairs. They had heard none of the sounds from the street. Somebody began to call in the corridor outside the library. The voice sounded above the music from the ballroom, and quavered with anxious entreaty as it demanded, over and over: "Senator Corson! Where are you, Senator Corson?" "Here!" replied the Senator. The secretary rushed in. "There's a mob outside, sir! A threatening mob!" "Ah! Morrison, your friends are looking you up!" "They are radicals--anarchists. They must be!" panted the messenger. "They are yelling: 'Down with the capitalists! Down with the aristocrats!' I ordered the shades pulled. The men seemed to be excited by looking in through the windows at the dancers in the ballroom!" "There'll be no trouble. I'll answer for that," promised the Mayor, marching away. Before he reached the door the crash of splintered glass, the screams of women and shouts of men; drowned the music. Stewart went leaping down the stairs. When he reached the ballroom he found the frightened guests massed against the wall, as far from the windows as they could crowd. A wild battle of some sort was going on outside in the night, so oaths and cries and the grim thudding of battering fists revealed. Before Stewart could reach a window--one of those from which the glass had been broken--Commander Lanigan came through the aperture with a rush, skating to a standstill along the polished floor. Blood was on his hands. His sleeves hung in ribbons. In that scene of suspended gaiety he was a particularly grisly interloper. "They sneaked it over on us, Mister Mayor!" he yelled. "I got a tip and routed out the Legion boys and chased 'em, but the dirty, Bullshevists beat us to it up the hill. But we've got 'em licked!" "Keep 'em licked for the rest of the night," Morrison suggested. "I'll be down-town with you, right away!" But Lanigan, in his raging excitement, was not amenable to hints or orders, nor was he cautious in his revelations. "We can handle things down-town, Your Honor! What we want to know is, what about up-town--up on Capitol Hill?" "You've had my promise of what I'll do. And I'll do it!" Senator Corson and his daughter had arrived in the ballroom. The Senator was promptly and intensely interested in this cocksure declaration by Morrison. "Your promise is the same as hard cash for me and the level-headed ones," retorted Commander Lanigan. "But whether it's the Northern Lights in the skies or plain hellishness in folks or somebody underneath stirring and stirring trouble and starting lies, I don't know! Lots of good boys have stopped being level-headed! I'll hold the gang down if I can, sir. But what I want to know is, can we depend on you to tend to Capitol Hill? Are you still on the job? Can I tell 'em that you're still on the job?"