The gesture had its calculated effect: heads turned, necks were craned; the roar died down to a confused murmur. Presently they would turn back to him and seek to have the thing explained; then would come silence and they would hear what he had to say; and though that was not going to make them less dangerous, it would no longer be danger for him, but for others. Now it so happened that in the direction where he pointed there was, by fate or by chance, something which on being pointed at, did excite the curiosity of the crowd. On its far outskirts a lone taxi with persistent wrigglings was trying to get through; an attempt which, until the attention of the crowd had been directed towards it, would have been absolutely hopeless. But now, as if by the manipulation of an invisible police, a way grew open before it, and the taxi triumphantly advanced. As it did so it became--though nobody could guess why--a thing of extraordinary importance; people began climbing on each other’s backs to look at it. Even Mr. Trimblerigg became interested; for this--though an interruption--was also a diversion; it meant safety. A crowd which could focus its interest on a taxi-cab, could focus it also upon him; nor had he now the slightest doubt that when he spoke to it the crowd would prove amenable. Folding his arms on the balustrade, and playing with his eyeglasses, he was the very picture of confidence and hope and courage and resourcefulness, and all the other things which, in their leaders, men admire. How could people look at him without liking him? How could they hear him without trusting him? How could there be any danger for a man who stood up to face it with such an air of high spirits and genial acceptance of a situation which seemed awkward. He felt with a sure instinct that the crowd was coming his way, that in another moment it would be cheering him. The taxi was coming his way also. It stopped. Davidina put out her head. Over the hushed murmurs of the crowd, clear and incisive her voice reached him: ‘Jonathan, take that off!’ If the end of Mr. Trimblerigg’s world could have come then in whatever other form it chose to take, it might have been said of him thereafter that he died happy, died believing in himself, and believed in by others even though the immediate circumstances spelt failure.