Part 37 (1/2)
”Here we are,” cried the driver, a few minutes later, pulling up his half dead oxen and leaping to the ground. He threw off the covering and they lost no time in tumbling from their bed of melons to the cobble-stone pavement of a narrow alley into which he had turned for safety. ”Through this pa.s.sage!” he gasped, hoa.r.s.e with excitement. ”The Tower is below. Follow me! My oxen will stand. I am going with you!” His rugged face was aglow.
Off through the alley they hurried, King disdaining the pain his ankle was giving him. They came to the crowded square a few minutes later. The clock in the Cathedral pointed to twelve o'clock and after! The catastrophe had not yet taken place; the people were laughing and singing and shouting. They were in time. Everywhere they heard glad voices crying out that the Prince was coming! It was the Royal band that they heard through dinning ears!
”Great G.o.d!” cried Truxton, stopping suddenly and pointing with trembling hand to a spot across the street and a little below where they had pushed through the resentful, staring throng on the sidewalk.
”There she is! At the corner! Stop her!”
He had caught sight of Olga Platanova.
The first row of dragoons was already pa.s.sing in front of her. Less than two hundred feet away rolled the royal coach of gold! All this flashed before the eyes of the distracted pair, who were now das.h.i.+ng frantically into the open street, disregarding the shouts of the police and the howls of the crowd.
”An anarchist!” shouted King hoa.r.s.ely. He looked like one himself. ”The bomb! The bomb! Stop the Prince!”
Colonel Quinnox recognised this bearded, uncouth figure, and the flying, terrified girl at his heels. King was dragging her along by the hand.
There was an instant of confusion on the part of the vanguard, a drawing of sabres, a movement toward the coach in which the Prince rode.
Quinnox alone prevented the dragoons from cutting down the pallid madman who stumbled blindly toward the coaches beyond. He whirled his steed after an astonished glance in all directions, shouting eager commands all the while. When he reached the side of the gasping American, that person had stopped and was pointing toward the trembling Olga, who had seen and recognised him.
”Stop the coach!” cried King. Loraine was running frantically through the ranks of hors.e.m.e.n, screaming her words of alarm.
The Duke of Perse leaped from his carriage and ran forward, shouting to the soldiers to seize the disturbers. Panic seized the crowd. There was a mad rush for the corner above. Olga Platanova stood alone, her eyes wide and gla.s.sy, staring as if petrified at the face of Truxton King.
He saw the object in her wavering hand. With a yell he dashed for safety down the seething avenue. The Duke of Perse struck at him as he pa.s.sed, ignoring the frantic cry of warning that he uttered. A plain, white-faced farmer in a smock of blue was crossing the street with mighty bounds, his eyes glued upon the arm of the frail, terrified anarchist. If he could only arrest that palsied, uncertain arm!
But she hurled the bomb, her hands going to her eyes as she fell upon her knees.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE THROWING OF THE BOMB
The scene that followed beggars all powers of description.
A score of men and horses lay writhing in the street; others crept away screaming with pain; human flesh and that of animals lay in the path of the frenzied, panic-stricken holiday crowd; blood mingled with the soft mud of Regengetz Circus, slimy, slippery, ugly!
Rent bodies of men in once gaudy uniforms, now flattened and bruised in warm, oozy death, were piled in a ma.s.s where but a moment before the wondering vanguard of troopers had cl.u.s.tered. For many rods in all directions stunned creatures were struggling to their feet after the stupendous shock that had felled them. The clattering of frightened horses, the shouts and screams of men and women, the gruesome rush of ten thousand people in stampede--all in twenty seconds after the engine of death left the hand of Olga Platanova.
Olga Platanova! There was nothing left of her! She had failed to do the deed expected of her, but she would not hear the execrations of those who had depended upon her to kill the Prince. We draw a veil across the picture of Olga Platanova after the bomb left her hand; no one may look upon the quivering, shattered thing that once was a living, beautiful woman. The glimpse she had of Truxton King's haggard face unnerved her.
She faltered, her strength of will collapsed; she hurled the bomb in a panic of indecision. Ma.s.sacre but not conquest!
Down in an alley below the Tower, a trembling, worn team of oxen stood for a day and night, awaiting the return of a master who was never to come back to them. G.o.d rest his simple soul!
Truxton King picked himself up from the street, dazed, bewildered but unhurt. Everywhere about him mad people were rus.h.i.+ng and screeching.
Scarcely knowing what he did, he fled with the crowd. From behind him came the banging of guns, followed by new shouts of terror. He knew what it meant! The revolutionists had begun the a.s.sault on the paralysed minions of the government.
Scores of Royal Guardsmen swept past him, rus.h.i.+ng to the support of the coach of gold. The sharp, shrill scream of a single name rose above the tumult. Some one had seen the Iron Count!
”Marlanx!”