Ruffians with villainous faces, and simpletons fired with the responsibility of standing up for England, doing it so safely, too, by means of breaking the head of one young gentleman--up the platform they scrambled after their ringleaders and closed round the speaker.
In those last few hard-won yards Napier had collected a policeman. But above the attackers had fought Julian, to the edge of the platform. Napier had an instant's glimpse of him with a splash of scarlet down his face before they threw him over.
Upon that, a new emotion seized the crowd--a panic born of the consciousness of limits to police indifference. The mass swayed and broke away from where the figure had fallen. There were plenty of policemen, now that the need for their intervention was past.
Napier shouted to them for an ambulance, as he ran forward. Of the faces bent over the figure lying limp at the foot of the platform, one was lifted--Nan Ellis's.
"Wait!" Napier called to one of the policemen. "Get that lady out of this, will you?"
But the lady would come when she could take "him" along. "A taxi, please."
Some one had given her a large-sized pocket-handkerchief. She made a bandage and tied it round the bleeding head. Some one else fetched a cab for the lady. And the ambulance would be there in a minute.
"Oh, he'll hate the ambulance! Help me to get him to the cab!" she besought.
His eyelids opened, and he moaned a little as, between Napier and one of the policemen, Julian was carried through the alley which had been opened in the crowd. As the limp figure was borne past, they muttered and jeered.
"Oh, _hush_!" cried a voice. "Isn't it enough to have nearly killed him?" Nan's question cut its way through the muttering and hate; it startled the people into momentary silence. But when the little procession had gained the cab and were driving off, the anger of the disintegrated mob broke out afresh. The air was filled with cries, and for several hundred yards men and boys ran along by the taxi, shouting insult and imprecation through the window.
Napier looked out. Not one of those foul-mouthed pursuers wore khaki or sailor's blue.
Late that night Gavan left a note in Berkeley Street, to be given to Lady Grant in the morning. He told her that he had got a doctor and a nurse, and "Julian has come off better than I could have believed."
