They had left him in the garden like a garden statue; there might have been a dolphin coiling round his legs, or a fountain pouring out of his mouth, for all the notice they had taken of Innocent Smith. He stood with his crest of blonde, blown hair thrust somewhat forward, his fresh-coloured, rather short-sighted face looking patiently downwards at nothing in particular, his huge shoulders humped, and his hands in his trousers pockets.
So far as they could guess he had not moved at all.
His green coat might have been cut out of the green turf on which he stood. In his shadow Pym had expounded and Rosamund expostulated, Michael had ranted and Moses had ragged.
He had remained like a thing graven; the god of the garden.
A sparrow had perched on one of his heavy shoulders; and then, after correcting its costume of feathers, had flown away.
"Why," cried Michael, with a shout of laughter, "the Court of Beacon has opened--and shut up again too. You all know now I am right.
Your buried common sense has told you what my buried common sense has told me. Smith might have fired off a hundred cannons instead of a pistol, and you would still know he was harmless as I know he is harmless.
Back we all go to the house and clear a room for discussion.
For the High Court of Beacon, which has already arrived at its decision, is just about to begin its inquiry."
"Just a goin' to begin!" cried little Mr. Moses in an extraordinary sort of disinterested excitement, like that of an animal during music or a thunderstorm. "Follow on to the 'Igh Court of Eggs and Bacon;
'ave a kipper from the old firm! 'Is Lordship complimented Mr. Gould on the 'igh professional delicacy 'e had shown, and which was worthy of the best traditions of the Saloon Bar-- and three of Scotch hot, miss! Oh, chase me, girls!"
The girls betraying no temptation to chase him, he went away in a sort of waddling dance of pure excitement; and has made a circuit of the garden before he reappeared, breathless but still beaming.
Moon had known his man when he realized that no people presented to Moses Gould could be quite serious, even if they were quite furious. The glass doors stood open on the side nearest to Mr. Moses Gould; and as the feet of that festive idiot were evidently turned in the same direction, everybody else went that way with the unanimity of some uproarious procession.
Only Diana Duke retained enough rigidity to say the thing that had been boiling at her fierce feminine lips for the last few hours.
Under the shadow of tragedy she had kept it back as unsympathetic.
"In that case," she said sharply, "these cabs can be sent away."
"Well, Innocent must have his bag, you know," said Mary with a smile.
"I dare say the cabman would get it down for us."
"I'll get the bag," said Smith, speaking for the first time in hours; his voice sounded remote and rude, like the voice of a statue.
Those who had so long danced and disputed round his immobility were left breathless by his precipitance. With a run and spring he was out of the garden into the street; with a spring and one quivering kick he was actually on the roof of the cab.
The cabman happened to be standing by the horse's head, having just removed its emptied nose-bag. Smith seemed for an instant to be rolling about on the cab's back in the embraces of his Gladstone bag.
The next instant, however, he had rolled, as if by a royal luck, into the high seat behind, and with a shriek of piercing and appalling suddenness had sent the horse flying and scampering down the street.
His evanescence was so violent and swift, that this time it was all the other people who were turned into garden statues.
Mr. Moses Gould, however, being ill-adapted both physically and morally for the purposes of permanent sculpture, came to life some time before the rest, and, turning to Moon, remarked, like a man starting chattily with a stranger on an omnibus, "Tile loose, eh? Cab loose anyhow."
There followed a fatal silence; and then Dr. Warner said, with a sneer like a club of stone,--
"This is what comes of the Court of Beacon, Mr. Moon. You have let loose a maniac on the whole metropolis."
Beacon House stood, as has been said, at the end of a long crescent of continuous houses. The little garden that shut it in ran out into a sharp point like a green cape pushed out into the sea of two streets.
Smith and his cab shot up one side of the triangle, and certainly most of those standing inside of it never expected to see him again.
At the apex, however, he turned the horse sharply round and drove with equal violence up the other side of the garden, visible to all those in the group.
With a common impulse the little crowd ran across the lawn as if to stop him, but they soon had reason to duck and recoil. Even as he vanished up street for the second time, he let the big yellow bag fly from his hand, so that it fell in the centre of the garden, scattering the company like a bomb, and nearly damaging Dr. Warner's hat for the third time.
Long before they had collected themselves, the cab had shot away with a shriek that went into a whisper.
"Well," said Michael Moon, with a queer note in his voice;
"you may as well all go inside anyhow. We've got two relics of Mr. Smith at least; his fiancee and his trunk."
"Why do you want us to go inside?" asked Arthur Inglewood, in whose red brow and rough brown hair botheration seemed to have reached its limit.
"I want the rest to go in," said Michael in a clear voice, "because I want the whole of this garden in which to talk to you."
There was an atmosphere of irrational doubt; it was really getting colder, and a night wind had begun to wave the one or two trees in the twilight.
Dr. Warner, however, spoke in a voice devoid of indecision.
"I refuse to listen to any such proposal," he said; "you have lost this ruffian, and I must find him."
"I don't ask you to listen to any proposal," answered Moon quietly;
"I only ask you to listen."
