Suddenly the tall man landed a brutal kick on his shin, another of them got in a heavy blow on his ear and a third, charging him head downward, butted him in the midriff. With a gasp he was sent flying to the ground, the man on top of him.
For the next few moments he suffered indescribably. Heavy boots thudded into his ribs. One of the men jumped upon his stomach. Kneeling beside him, they wrenched out his pocket-book and delivered blow after blow on his face wherever he was unable to guard it. A vicious kick on the back of the head caused him to see red lights stabbing the blackness before his eyes; then he fainted.
As consciousness left him, his last coherent thought was that these devils had robbed him of all chance of getting free to find Lavina.
Hell in Hyde Park
When Derek came round he was one mass of aches and bruises. With infinite caution and considerable pain he lifted his hand to his head. It felt the size of a pumpkin and as though the soft matter inside was gently surging to and fro, each beat of his heart propelling it backwards and forwards in great waves of pain.
At first he did not know where he was or what had happened to him, but gradually his thoughts became coherent and he remembered how he had been attacked and robbed by some of his fellow prisoners.
With a great effort of will he sat up and began to examine himself all over. His shin hurt abominably where he had been kicked and his ribs pained him every time he took a breath, but he did not think that any of his bones were broken. There was a lump on the back of his head and another on his jaw. One of his eyes was half-closed and from the sticky crust which had formed on his upper lip he knew that his nose had been bleeding.
It struck him then that the sky was much lighter. He must have been out for a long time, as dawn was approaching. He began again to wonder miserably about Lavina and in what wretched state the new day would find her.
Looking round him, he saw that nearly all his fellow-prisoners were lying on the ground asleep. There were many more of them than there had been when he was put in the cage. Evidently the police had been rounding up fresh batches of rioters and interning them all night. There were now several thousand men in the great oblong barbed-wire encampment. Vaguely he began to wonder if he would be able to find his assailants and charge them, but he had seen the tall, bony man only by starlight and the others had been no more than whirling figures in the semi-darkness. With such a vague memory of his face, to look for the tall man among all these hundreds of prisoners would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Slowly he got to his feet and, limping painfully, made his way to the gate of the enclosure. About fifty men were congregated there; recent arrivals, who were still telling each other of their exploits during the night and how they had been captured.
Clinging on to the bars of the gate for support, Derek peered through them and called to the sentry. The man took no notice but, after a few moments, Derek managed to attract the attention of a passing Sergeant.
'What do you want?' asked the Sergeant gruffly.
'I've been attacked and robbed,' muttered Derek.
''Been in a rough house trying to rob people yourself more likely.' The Sergeant stared unsympathetically. 'Plenty of your kind brought in tonight.'
'No. It was here in the camp, a few hours ago. Some thugs beat me up and stole my money.'
The soldier peered a little closer in the uncertain light. 'You do look a bit of a mess,' he granted.
'I'm pretty well all-in.' Derek mumbled. 'For God's sake get me a doctor, can't you.'
'All right, then. You'll have to wait your turn, though.'
'My turn?'
'Yes. The doctor's been busy on casualties all night. He's still got a dozen or so in that hut over there waiting to be patched up.' The Sergeant nodded in the direction of a fair-sized wooden building some distance away then, turning, called a Guardsman out of the guard hut nearby.
The gate was unlocked and, taking Derek by the arm, the Guardsman led him over to the doctor's quarters.
Inside a small ante-room two lines of men were sitting dejectedly on wooden benches. Some were already roughly bandaged with blood-soaked rags, and all had injuries received in fighting. One was sobbing quietly in a corner and another moaned monotonously. Derek took his place upon a bench and waited.
It was over an hour before his turn came to go inside and, in the meantime, other casualties had been brought in to replace those who had been treated.
The doctor proved to be a fat, bald, sharp-eyed little man wearing the uniform of a Captain. No nurses were present but he had two Orderlies in white overalls as assistants and one of them was dressing an arm wound for the last patient as Derek entered.
'Well, what's your trouble?' the Doctor asked sharply. He had been working all night without respite and was in no mood to exchange idle pleasantries.
'I was attacked and beaten up,' Derek said briefly.
'All right. Better strip, then.'
The other Orderly helped Derek in the painful process of getting off his clothes. He was then told to lie down on a bare, hard couch in the centre of the room and the doctor gave him a swift examination; some of the spots on which he pressed firmly with his thumbs causing his examinee excruciating agony.
'Not much wrong with you,' he said after a moment. 'Nasty bruise on your shin but no bones broken. A day or two in bed will see you fit—when you can get there; but you're not a hospital case. I can't spare beds at St. George's for anyone who's not seriously injured.'
The Orderlies came forward and dabbed the worst of Derek's bruises with some soothing ointment. As they produced some bandages he said slowly:
'I'll be all right, but what I'm worried about is getting out of here. You see, I was with a girl last night and we were separated. I've simply got to find her.'
'I'm afraid there isn't much chance of your being able to do that. The orders are that anybody who's been arrested is to be kept inside until the trouble's over.'
'What?' Derek sat up with a start, felt a stab of pain and sank back with a moan. 'But they can't do that—it isn't legal.'
'My dear man, under its emergency powers the Government can do anything and, to my mind, they're behaving very sensibly. Nearly all the lawless elements of the city were out on the spree last night and that gave the police just the chance they wanted to collar them. By keeping them behind barbed wire we'll be able to stop a great deal of looting.'
"But I'm not a crook. I wasn't even drunk when I was arrested.'
'That's just your bad luck, then. But, if you were mixed up in such a crowd, you asked for it, and evidently you're an irresponsible person.'
'I'm nothing of the kind; and the girl I was with is highly respectable, yet she was lugged off with a lot of drunken street-women.'
'Perhaps, but the very fact that you were involved in a riot justifies the Government in arresting you both for your own protection.'
When the Orderlies had finished bandaging Derek he was told to dress while another casualty was brought in. But when he had struggled back into his clothes, he made one last effort.
'Look here, I've simply got to find this young woman I was with somehow. Couldn't you possibly get me an interview with an Officer?'
'No, I couldn't,' the doctor replied irritably. 'There aren't enough Officers in the whole battalion to listen to one-tenth of the people who're asking to see them. Here, drink this up; it'll take your head away. Then get out and have a good sleep on the grass.'
Derek dutifully drank up the potion he was offered and, leaving, was led back to the barbed-wire enclosure.
The people in it were rousing up now and he began to look round with a vague hope of finding the tall man who had trapped him, but he could not see him anywhere.