The big door had neither bell nor knocker. She turned her back on it and kicked with the heel of her slipper.
The voice that inquired "Who's there?" revealed that the warder was not wholly sure of his nerves.
"I tell you I am Senator Corson's daughter! I want to come in. My father is there!"
She was answered by a different voice; she recognized it. It was the unmistakable drawl and nasal twang of Perley Wyman. Her girlhood memories of Perley's voice had been freshened very recently because he had been assigned to the Corson mansion by Thompson the florist as her chief aide in decorating for the reception. "Wal, I should say he was here--and then some! This was the door he came in through."
"Open it! Open it at once, Perley Wyman!"
"I dunno about that, Miss Corson! We've got orders about politicians and mobbers--"
"I'm neither. I command you to open this door."
Soldier Wyman pulled the bolts and opened. "I ain't feeling like taking any more chances with the Corson family this evening," he admitted, with a grin that set his long jaw awry. "Your father nigh cuffed my head up to a peak when I tried to tell him what my orders were."
Miss Corson was not interested in the troubles of Guard Wyman. He was talking through a narrow crack; she set her hands against the door and pushed her way in. "Where is my father? What trouble is he in?"
"I reckon it can't be any kind of trouble but what he'll be capable of taking care of himself in it all right," opined the guard, fondling his cheek with the back of his hand. "But there ain't any trouble in here, Miss Corson. It's all serene as a canned sardine that was canned for the siege of Troy, as it said in the opery the High School Cadets put on that year you was in the--"
"There's a mob in front of the State House!"
"It'll stay there," stated Wyman, remaining as serene as the comestible he had mentioned. "The St. Ronan's Rifles can't be backed down by any mob. We have been ordered to shoot, and that kind of a gang in this city might as well learn its lesson to-night as any other night. It's getting time to do a lot of law-and-order shooting in this country."
The girl, harrowed by her apprehensions, was not in the mood to discuss affairs with this amateur belligerent. But his complacency in his bloodthirsty attitude was peculiarly exasperating in her case. He seemed to typify that unreasonable spirit of slaughter that disdained to employ the facilities of good sense first of all. This florist's clerk, whom she had last seen on a step-ladder with his mouth full of tacks, was talking of shooting down his fellow-civilians as if there were no other alternative.