Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/154

 "Hulks, get a chair and sit down by that door. The only people you will allow in or out are the people staying here."

The noise and the hustle then concentrated themselves outside the hotel. Cars were drawn up two deep, with a central passage between them through which the passing traflic sorted itself out slowly. Roland rang up the Police Inspector at Winstonbury.

"Will you come out and clear this road. We have a mob of cars and people here. And what we want is—silence."

The Inspector came out in person, with a couple of constables, and the road was cleared—and the traffic kept on the move. And yet though persuasion was used, human and reasonable persuasion, people stood backed at a little distance like cattle turning stupidly to stare, and passing cars would slow up and attempt to stop outside the hotel.

Roland stood inside the locked front door with his hands in his pockets.

"Here's your nice—sensational—civilization," he said to Sorrell. "Cattle!"

"Cattle can read, sir."

"Damn it,—let us give them something to read."

During the afternoon a ladder was reared against the great cross-beam supporting the sign of the Pelican, and Albert Hulks ascended the ladder and hung up two boards so that travellers from west and east could read what was printed upon them.

The appeal had considerable effect.

The Press of the country had resumed control of the lives of "Ethel and Duck," and the autocrat of the Daily Sun, having heard of the crowds and of Mr. Roland's noticeboards, dared to admonish his readers.