He opened his eyes. He was alone. He had heard nothing.
It is probable that "the young man" had departed, with light steps,
some time before, but the sense of the horrid pressure had lingered even
after the knife had gone. A feeling of weakness came over him. He had
just time to stagger to the garden seat. He felt as though he had held
his breath for a long time. He sat all in a heap, panting with the shock
of the reaction.
The band was executing, with immense bravura, the complicated finale. It
ended with a tremendous crash. He heard it unreal and remote, as if his
ears had been stopped, and then the hard clapping of a thousand, more
or less, pairs of hands, like a sudden hail-shower passing away. The
profound silence which succeeded recalled him to himself.
A tramcar resembling a long glass box wherein people sat with their
heads strongly lighted, ran along swiftly within sixty yards of the spot
where he had been robbed. Then another rustled by, and yet another
going the other way. The audience about the band had broken up, and were
entering the alley in small conversing groups.
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