“No, no,” he said almost imploringly, “let the boy be--what has he to do with all this? Leave him. He has nothing to do with it. He knows nothing.”
“But I ought to know,” Peter burst in. “Why have I been kept in the dark all this time? What right have you--”
He broke off suddenly. Absolute silence fell amongst them all and they stood looking at the door, motionless, in their places. There was a new note in the murmuring of the crowd, and the swift steady passing of it came up the street to the shop and in at the door. Voices could be heard rising above others, and then the eager passing of some piece of news from one to another.
No one in the shop spoke. Outside in the deserted street there was silence and then the bands, as though driven by some common wave of feeling, seemed at the same moment to burst into a blare of music. Some voice, from the crowd, started “God save the Queen” and immediately it was taken up and flung into the air by a thousand voices. They must give vent to their feelings, some news had passed down the crowds like a flame setting fire to a chain of beacons.
“What is it?” Peter pressed forwards to the door. And at once he was answered. Men were running past the shop, crying out; one stopped for an instant and, wild with excitement, his hands gesticulating, stammering, the words tumbling from his lips, he shouted at them--“They've bin flinging bombs ... dirty foreigners ... up there by the Marble Arch--flinging them at the Old Lady. But it's all right, by Gawd--only blew 'imself up, dirty foreigner--little bits of 'im and no one else 'urt and now the Old Lady's comin' down the street--she'll be 'ere in quarter of an 'our and won't we show 'er ... by Gawd ... flingin' their dirty bombs up there by the Marble Arch and killin' nobody but 'imself--Gawd save the Old Lady--” he rushed on.
So that was it. Peter, standing in the middle of the room, looked at them all and understood at last amongst whom he had been working these seven years. They were murderers, the lot of them--all of them--Gottfried, Zanti ... Stephen--Oh God! Stephen! He understood now for what they had been waiting.
He turned sick at the sudden realisation of it. It did not, at first, seem to touch himself in any way. At the first immediate knowledge of it he had been faced by its amazing incongruity. There by the Marble Arch, with bands flying, flags waving, in all the tumult of a Royal Progress some one had been blown into little pieces. Elsewhere there were people waiting, eating buns out of paper bags, and here in the shop the sun lighted the backs of rows of second-hand novels and down in Treliss the water was, very gently, lapping the little wooden jetty. Oh! the silly jumbling of things in this silly jumbling world!