The Platform in its turn attempted to go out, but the single door of issue so considerably impeded their determined efforts that their rear, if I may so express myself, was hopelessly outflanked by their assailants long before the communications of the retreat had been properly organised. It cannot be denied that Mr. Alderman Thorne made a good fight of it for a man of his age and dimensions, and at the very moment when Mrs. Battersby, emitting piercing shrieks, was being squeezed sideways through the door, he was observed planting his fist with some vigour into the face of one of his own colleagues whom he had mistaken for the enemy. Mr. Clay, who was quite unused to other combat than that of religious debate, improvised a defence with a chair, the legs of which he pushed back and forth rapidly with such considerable effect as to permit him to abandon his post almost the last and without a wound. As for Mr. Bailey, he took refuge in his mere height; he retreated somewhat to the back of the platform, stood up, surveyed the swaying tangle of struggling men. He was pleased to note that the sound tradition which forbids men of inferior reach and weight to engage in coarse physical contest, spared him the active exertions necessary to so many of his friends. When he saw, or thought he saw, that the last of these as they backed towards the door were in danger of ill-treatment, he elbowed his way without much resistance in their direction, and with some good humour pushed aside the first rank of their assailants. Meanwhile the platform was completely covered with the victorious band who had stormed it; the moment was propitious for the entry of the police, who had been telephoned for from the ante-room; ten of these stalwart fellows marched in with military precision, and by their vigorous efforts prevented any further ingress to the platform which they erroneously supposed they had come in time to defend. Mr. Bailey, shuffling out into the street in the midst of his still heated neighbours, thought it would be entertaining to approach the main door and to hear the opinion of the electorate. He was not disappointed. When the last of them had come out and when he had managed to explain himself to the police, who were all for making him their unique prisoner, he walked slowly homewards, meditating upon the forces of the modern world and imagining doubtless a hundred hare-brained theories to account for the very simple accident which had befallen the unfortunate Clutterbuck. To his diseased mind there seemed no third explanation beyond kidnapping and blackmail; and when he considered the shortness of the time available for the discovery of Mr. Clutterbuck's foibles, his futile judgment had determined _à priori_ and without a shadow of proof, that as Mr. Clutterbuck could not have been blackmailed, Mr. Clutterbuck had been spirited away. * * * * *