e 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 horsemen, 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 glassy, 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 passed,
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 mass where but a moment before the
wondering vanguard of troopers had clustered. 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