A moment later, as Barbara fled the churchyard, a terrible explosion rocked the ground under her. She fell forward into the protective arms of the bobby.
The officer blew his whistle again. Within moments the high-pitched siren of an emergency vehicle pierced the drizzly, fog-laden afternoon air.
Barbara started to re-enter the churchyard, but the Bobby held her back.
"No, Miss. There may be another bomb in there. Was anyone in there with you? They must be dead from the blast."
Please, God, no! Barbara thought. I didn't know who he was. Or is. No Face may still be alive. I pray he is. I want to know why he saved my life, again. "Two men were in the churchyard," she told the Bobby.
Within minutes, an emergency rescue crew arrived and put No Face on a stretcher. Barbara waited anxiously just outside the churchyard as he was brought past her.
"Is he alive?" she asked.
"For now," a medic replied. "Unconscious, but still alive. For how long, it's hard to say. The other one, the young man, is dead. From the looks of him, he must have stepped on the bomb."
Barbara watched as two more rescuers lifted Chet's lifeless body onto a stretcher.
"The one goes to the morgue, the other to hospital," a medic in charge told his comrades.
Barbara pleaded to ride with No Face to the hospital they were taking him to, and they let her. Enroute to Westminster Hospital, she found a clean towel and began touching it to his face. Amazingly, she thought, it had not been injured in the blast, although most of his body, blackened or bleeding, had been all but torn apart.
She felt a strange tenderness toward the man as he lay unconscious on a cot beside her. She remembered how more than once when she had seen him over the years, she had been torn between running from him and showing him some kindness, despite his frightening face.
Who are you? she asked as he lay unconscious. I must know!