"All we have to do, you see," said Colonel Morehead, "is to make a dash behind these uniforms, and a second more and we're inside. The crowd will be fooled." But the crowd was not fooled. For suddenly there rose upon the air a mighty cry as if from a thousand throats: "Wilkinson! Wilkinson! He's here! He's here! This way! This way! There's Wilkinson!" A moment's silence, and then more cries of: "Thief! Forger! Perjurer! My money--give me back my money!... Arg-gh Wilkinson ...!" "Now, Wilkinson," whispered the Colonel, "keep a stiff upper lip; don't turn a hair. Just get out of the car and walk right through. I know crowds--nothing will happen--nothing. Now...." Colonel Morehead was a man whose orders were generally obeyed. Consequently, in a situation like this, his reassuring words carried great weight, and the men with him in the car, immediately following his example, jumped to their feet. For an instant they stood, exposed to merciless hootings, preparing to alight; and in that very instant there suddenly rang out a revolver shot, and a puff of smoke floated over the densest part of the crowd, while, almost simultaneously, one of the four men in the car, clutching first at the air and then at his throat, plunged head foremost into the street below. Just how it happened the police never knew, but all remembered hearing a voice cry out: "Wilkinson!" For a moment that seemed hours, the trained Pinkertons failed to rise to the emergency, but then fairly leaping into the machine and dragging the men across the sidewalk, they thrust them into the safety within the hall and closed the doors on them. Out again and into the street dashed the Pinkertons with the two uniformed officers, and there they picked up the body which was lying hideously huddled between the curb and the machine. As for Francois the chauffeur, he had fled. "Get back there! Get back there!" cried the officers. "If you don't, we'll pull our clubs. Get back! Will you get back ...!" But the frenzied crowd would not budge. So the officers, with their backs to the machine, plied their clubs viciously about them, but even then the mob persisted. "It served him right! He got what was coming to him!" came from all sides. "Get back!" cried the officers, standing guard over the body on the sidewalk. Gently one of them felt of the dead man, opening his clothing at the neck, felt of his heart. Now the officers shook their heads. A man came running through the crowd. "I'm a doctor," he told them; "anything I can do?" He, too, applied the tests. Presently he finished and rose to his feet, and announced: "He's dead--dead as a door nail." The policemen carried the body into the huge building and laid it down upon the stones. "Great heavens! It's little Pallister." The exclamation fell from the lips of Peter V. Wilkinson as he clutched at Colonel Morehead for support. A moment later, wiping the perspiration from his face, he added: "And they meant that for me!" VIII