The crowd gasped.
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Charles Halloway ducked. He put up his right hand. The rifle slapped his palm. He grabbed. It did not fall. He had it good.
The audience hooted, said things against Mr. Dark's bad manners which made him turn away for a moment, damning himself, silently.
Will's father lifted the rifle, beaming.
The crowd roared.
And while the wave of applause came in, crashed, and went back down the shore, he looked again to the maze, where the sensed but unseen shadow-shapes of Will and Jim were filed among titanic razor blades of revelation and illusion, then back to the Medusa gaze of Mr. Dark, swiftly reckoned with, and on to the stitched and jittering sightless nun of midnight, sidling back still more. Now she was as far as she could sidle, at the far end of the platform, almost pressed to the whorled red-black rifle bull's-eye target.
"Boy!" shouted Charles Halloway.
Mr. Dark stiffened.
"I need a bov volunteer to help me hold the rifle!" shouted Charles Halloway.
"Someone! Anyone!" he shouted.
A few boys in the crowd shifted around on their toes.
"Boy!" shouted Charles Halloway. "Hold on. My son's out there. He'll volunteer, won't you, Will?"
The Witch flung one hand up to feel the shape of this audacity which came off the fifty-four-year-old man like a fever. Mr. Dark was spun round as if hit by a fast-traveling gunshot.
"Will!" called his father.
In the Wax Museum, Will sat motionless.
"Will!" called his father. "Come on, boy!"
The crowd looked left, looked right, looked back.
No answer.
Will sat in the Wax Museum.
Mr. Dark observed all of this with some respect, some degree of admiration, some concern; he seemed to be waiting, just as was Will's father.
"Will, come help your old man!" Mr. Halloway cried, jovially.
Will sat in the Wax Museum.
Mr. Dark smiled.
"Will! Willy! Come here!"
No answer.
Mr. Dark smiled more.
"Willy! Don't you hear your old man?"
Mr. Dark stopped smiling.
For this last was the voice of a gentleman in the crowd, speaking up.