They must be!" panted the messenger. "They
are yelling: 'Down with the capitalists! Down with the aristocrats!' I
ordered the shades pulled. The men seemed to be excited by looking in
through the windows at the dancers in the ballroom!"
"There'll be no trouble. I'll answer for that," promised the Mayor,
marching away.
Before he reached the door the crash of splintered glass, the screams of
women and shouts of men; drowned the music.
Stewart went leaping down the stairs. When he reached the ballroom he
found the frightened guests massed against the wall, as far from the
windows as they could crowd. A wild battle of some sort was going on
outside in the night, so oaths and cries and the grim thudding of
battering fists revealed.
Before Stewart could reach a window--one of those from which the glass had
been broken--Commander Lanigan came through the aperture with a rush,
skating to a standstill along the polished floor. Blood was on his hands.
His sleeves hung in ribbons. In that scene of suspended gaiety he was a
particularly grisly interloper.
"They sneaked it over on us, Mister Mayor!" he yelled. "I got a tip and
routed out the Legion boys and chased 'em, but the dirty, Bullshevists
beat us to it up the hill.
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