Suddenly from somewhere in the crowd a loud cry went up of "Murder! Murder!"
The cry seemed to break the fit of stupor in which Bennet was, for his face was seen to quiver, while a shudder shook his frame.
"What have I done? What have I done?" he said, as if he had just become conscious of the deed he had committed.
"You have killed him," replied one of those standing by.
"Dead! yes; he is dead, and you killed him!" answered the same man.
"I never meant to kill him," said Bennet, looking once more at the little figure that lay on the ground.
"Why," said a voice, "I heard you say to him, 'I'll kill you!'--I heard you say those very words!"
"I was in a passion," Bennet declared, "and did not know what I was doing. I never thought of killing him."
"Then why did you say to him--I heard the words distinctly--'I'll kill you'?"
But Bennet made no reply. He now comprehended fully the position in which he stood, and he thought silence his best policy. Those about him, however, were far from silent. He could not help hearing what was being said, and he understood that nothing but detestation and execration were being expressed. The crowd had no sympathy whatever for him. On the contrary, had the crowd not been composed of Englishmen, accustomed to abide by the law of the land, Bennet would have been given a short shrift. If what he had done had been perpetrated in America, he would undoubtedly have been immediately lynched out of hand. But the crowd waited for the police to come upon the scene.
The crowd, however, talked excitedly, vehemently. The words which had passed between Bennet and the jockey were repeated from lip to lip. The statement of Bob Deans that Bennet had tried to bribe him to pull Go Nap, and that he had refused to do so, was soon known to all; in the minds of most was the thought that Bennet, in suggesting this course to the jockey, was guilty of a crime even greater perhaps than murder, and that no punishment was too heavy for it. Many of them would have maintained that hanging was too good for him; some of them even said so.
Presently the police came up, and Bennet was arrested and charged with the murder of Bob Deans.
The affair, as was to be expected, made a tremendous sensation, not only throughout the world of the turf, but everywhere.