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"Well!" she said. "We certainly heard more than we bargained for, didn't we! I
guess I'd better go lock the gates. I should hope that man doesn't represent
any church, but he must have got his hearers pretty well worked up."
She hurried out, and some of the children burst into tears. Before they could
be calmed, Jay dashed in again, followed by all the rest of the population of
the school.
"Go bawl somewhere else," he ordered. "The rest have to hear the tape
recording of that broadcast, right now!"
The two doctors shepherded the excited children out, and Jay bouncing with
fury, followed them.
"Will there be trouble, do you think?" Dr. Foxwell asked Dr. Welles in an
undertone.
"There may be. That that rabble-rouser did not give our exact location, but it
won't take people long to find out. News items and pictures about us have been
in all the local papers. We've given out statements and let things be known,
and this this sensation-monger has put it all together in a witches' brew
that well, who knows how people may react?"
Elsie blew her nose and regained a semblance of calm.
"Shall we call the police, or what?" she asked. "If I didn't know us, after
hearing that speech, I'd come and wipe us all right off the face of the
earth!"
"But there's no sense to any of it," Jay cried. "It's pure blasphemy from
start to finish. And he contradicted himself fifty times."
"I never heard such a mess of nonsense in my life," said Fred. "I'd like to
analyze it semantically. In fact, I'm going to, as soon as I simmer down."
"What's wrong with that man, Dr. Welles?" asked Giles.
"He's a feeling type gone wild," explained Peter. "You can tell that by the
way he despises and rejects the intellect, which, I might add, is a gift of
God and not to be subdued or discarded. A man like this goes all out in love
or hatred, without the least use of reason or stopping for an instant to think
about true and false either in his theology, or in the facts. A feeling type
does find it hard to think logically, hard, or even impossible, but they can
orient themselves to truth by perceiving, either with the senses or with the
intuition, what the object of their love or hate actually is. Humph. I've lost
track of my pronouns in the excitement there is no excuse for that!"
"Yes, he could at least have come up and looked at us before blowing off to
all the world like that," said Dr. Foxwell. "Come, now, children, go wash your
faces take an aspirin get a grip on yourselves! Your little lecture did help
quiet them, Pete," he added, as the children obediently left.
"Now if somebody would only quiet me," observed Peter, mopping his brow.
By the time the recording tape had played back the whole speech and the others
had come out of the hall, bursting with indignation, an angry crowd had
already begun to gather at the gate.
"I shall certainly enter a complaint," Mrs. Curtis was saving hotly. "To allow
such a telecast to continue was inexcusable!"
"Please turn off the lights here," said Mr. Gerrold to Mr. Waters, as the
first stone thudded near them. "Turn on the floodlights by the gate. Then we
can see them but they can't see us."
"If the gate is locked, I don't see what harm they can do," said Mr. Curtis.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Gerrold, but I am afraid you are going to be cheated out of an
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adventure."
"That speech was adventure enough," said Mr. Gerrold, fervently. "There!" as
the lights went out by the houses, and went on over the gate. "They can't aim
at us even if they have brought rifles. Now what? Shall I try to electrify the
fence?"
"I wouldn't," advised Miss Page firmly. "If one of this crowd should get a
slight shock, they'd all be convinced we were using ray-guns or secret weapons
on them. Trust in the barbed wire. The boys tell me the fence can't be
climbed."
"With ladders " began Mr. Gerrold, but Peter hushed him.
"They are unlikely to have brought ladders," he said.
"They have cut the telephone wires," Mrs. Waters reported.
"We have an adequate and alert police force," said Dr. Welles. "They can't be
unaware of what is going on."
"What do mobs usually do?" asked Alice.
"Oh, they throw stones," answered Dr. Foxwell, "and if they could get in they
might smash things, or set fires, or try to hurt some of us. There hasn't been
a lynching in this part of the world for a hundred years or more, and the
makings for tar-and-feathering are hard to come by on short notice. If we can
keep them out there goes a window-pane! I don't believe they'll do any great [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]