L. P. M.
Almost beside himself, Lawrence resisted all of Edestone’s efforts to
get him back into the elevator.
“You damn’ dirty Dutchman, I’ll pay you for this!” he yelled over his
shoulder, as he struggled to break loose from the firm grip which held
him, and get at the Count.
It was not a time to permit of argument. Overpowering him with his great
strength, Edestone simply dragged him back, and flung him into a corner
of the car, where he sat crying like a baby with uncontrollable rage.
After he had started the lift, however, Edestone went over and patted
him soothingly on the shoulder.
“I am sorry, old man,” he said regretfully, “awfully sorry! He thought
it was I, and I almost wish it had been.”
This brought Lawrence back to himself. He knew that Edestone meant every
word he said and, jumping to his feet, he threw his arms around his
friend’s neck.
“Bo!” he exclaimed, half-laughing, half-sobbing, “you are a king among
men!” little dreaming of the amount of truth there was in what he said.
A moment later he dropped back into the vernacular, where he was more at
home.
“You are the best sport I ever knew,” he said, “and I am nothing but a
rotten squealer! Forgive me, and I will try to be good. But, Bo! that
did hurt!” The tears came to his eyes once more. “He was such a nervy
little chap!”
By this time they had gotten to the roof, where they found Black,
Stanton, and James eagerly awaiting them.
“Where is Fred?” asked Black, noting his absence as the other two
stepped out to join them.
“Dead by God!” Lawrence started again to become hysterical. “That devil,
Count von Hemelstein, killed him!”
“Shut up, Lawrence!” broke in Edestone sharply. “Cut out that swearing
and get to work. We have no time to lose.”
In the same quick, authoritative tone, he issued his orders to the
others, as they stood staring at the news, each in his different way
showing his breeding. Black was commencing to whine; Stanton with a
scowl of rage was in sympathy with Lawrence; while James, demonstrating
his years of training, stood statue-like with hand behind his back,
leaning forward as if to catch his master’s next order, and carry it out
with perfect decorum.
“Have you locked the door at the foot of the stairs? Ah! That is good!”
he exclaimed, as he saw that they had barricaded the door of the
bulkhead by putting a piece of timber between it and the coping around
one of the skylights.
It had grown quite dark in the interval, but in the glare of the great
searchlights which were playing upon her he could plainly see above him
the Little Peace Maker which had swung into a position directly over the
Embassy, and was now slowly descending.
She was not over a thousand feet above the roof as she hung there, three
of her great searchlights bearing steadily on three different points in
the city, and giving to her the aspect of an enormous spyglass standing
on its gigantic tripod, and by its own weight forcing the feet of the
tripod into the soft earth, as the ship slowly settled.
Shrapnel shells were exploding all about her, and at times she was
almost entirely enveloped in smoke. Between the reports of the heavier
artillery could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron
sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one
of the gunners would reach one of her searchlights, and as the ray was
extinguished, one almost expected to see her topple in the direction of
her broken support, but in each case it was quickly replaced by another,
and she continued to drop nearer and nearer to the earth.
Excepting for the searchlights there was no sign of life on
board. Silently and without response of any kind, she came. But as she
approached nearer, and the angle of the German guns was still further
reduced, although they must already have been doing frightful damage in
all parts of the city, the shrapnel and small bullets could be heard
screaming over the heads of the little party on the roof.
“It is getting pretty hot here, and we had better lie down,” Edestone
said. But the words were hardly out of his mouth before Stanton fell
with a bullet in his head, and James sat down, probably more abruptly
than he had ever done anything before in all his life.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he observed with a little gasp, “but I think, sir,
as how they have got me in the leg, sir.”
They all dropped down. Stanton was dead, and James was bleeding badly
from the flesh-wound in his leg.
“That was the fellow in that tower over there.” Lawrence made a
reconnoissance. “He is now shooting straight at us.”
“This has got to stop.” Edestone frowned. “Lawrence send this
message. No cipher; I would rather have them catch this.
“Tell ‘Specs’ first to haul down the U. S. flag and run up my private
signal. Then he is to silence every gun he can find that is bearing on
us, and train a machine-gun on the door of the bulk-head, ready to fire
when I give the signal by throwing up my hat.
“Take Lawrence up to the instrument, Mr. Black,” he directed, turning
to Black who was giving “first aid” to the unfortunate valet. “I will do
what I can for James.”
When the elevator with Lawrence and the electrician had gone up above
the level of the roof, leaving the shaft open down into the house, he
could distinctly hear the soldiers running up the stairs. At any moment
now they might be hammering on the door at the foot of the stairway
leading to the roof.
He hated the idea of killing those innocent Germans, mere machines, as
they were, in the hands of a Master, who with his entire entourage had
become sick with a mania which took the form of militarism, imperialism,
and pan-Germanism. But after the death of his two fellow-countrymen--for
at heart he was still true to the land of his birth, although to save her
he had just renounced the flag--he felt that he was justified in what he
was about to do.
With a silent prayer for the peasant mothers who were soon to lose their
dear ones, he commended their souls to God, and not as these mothers,
poor benighted creatures, had done, to their Emperor.
He was startled from these sorrowful reflections by the white glow of a
searchlight from the Little Peace Maker sweeping across the roof, and
playing hither and thither. Evidently, “Specs” had received his order,
and was now feeling about for the bulkhead door.
A moment later he located it. Immediately the night was made hideous
with the roar of the guns from the airship, as they sowed bursting
shells in all directions, and carried death and destruction to the heart
of this great and wonderful city, built up stone by stone, and standing
as a living monument to one of the greatest people on the face of the
earth--a people that science teaches are the very last expression of
God’s greatness shown in His wonderful evolution of matter into His own
image. And for what? That one family might maintain the position given
to one of their ancestors in the remote, dark, and grovelling ages of
the past for prowess of which a modern prizefighter might be proud, but
for acts to which he with a higher standard might not stoop.
The telling response of the Little Peace Maker soon put an end to the
storm of shrapnel and bullets which had been singing, whistling,
buzzing, and screaming about them, and Edestone might have been able to
stand up, but for the pertinacity of the snipers, those serpents of
modern warfare, who were searching every dark corner of the roof.
Matters were fast coming to a climax, however. By the time that
Lawrence and Black had returned from sending the wireless message, and
had crawled over to where Edestone lay, the soldiers had broken down the
lower door, and were pounding at the upper, which “Specs” was holding as
with a rapier point at the heart of a fallen foe, ready to strike at the
slightest movement.
Crawling over to the elevator shaft, Edestone called down a warning in a
loud voice to those below:
“I have a machine-gun trained on the top of the stairs! If you order
your men to break that door down, I will order my guns to fire, and will
kill them faster than you can drive them up!”
For a moment the only response to his challenge was silence. Then a
voice rang out which he had heard before, arrogant and commanding:
“As God has ordained that I and none other should rule the earth, with
Him alone, I shall. By my Imperial order, and with His assistance,
bring that man to me, dead or alive!”
A brief pause ensued. Edestone could hear the officers urging on their
men. Suddenly pistol-shots rang out, and with a mad rush they came on.
The door swayed and shivered under the impact. It split and
shattered. Finally it fell.
“May God have mercy on his soul!” murmured Edestone, and he tossed his
hat high in the air.
“Specs” from his look-out caught the signal; and instantly the doorway
became a writhing, shrieking mass of wounded humanity. Like vaseline
squeezed out of a tube, it was forced out of the opening by the pressure
of those behind and spread in wider and wider circles across the roof,
until the aperture itself was choked and stopped with bodies.
But Edestone and his companions were spared the full measure of this
sickening sight, as the rapid manoeuvres of the Little Peace Maker
compelled them to devote their attention to her.
As the great ship descended to within about ten feet of the
chimney-tops, men appeared on her lower bridge and dropped over the
insulated ladder which extended almost to where the refugees lay.
Picking James up and putting him on his back where he clung like a baby,
Edestone ran for the ladder, quickly followed by Lawrence and Black. He
reached the bridge just in time to turn James over to one of the crew,
and extend his assistance to Lawrence, who had received a shot in one
hand, and was rather dizzily holding on to the ladder with the
other. Eventually, though, they all gained the bridge, and with their
rescuers already there raced up the gangway under a perfect hail of
bullets for the open doorway at the top. But before the last man had
passed through, two of the sailors had been shot, and had fallen to
their death on the roof.
As they entered the ship, they were met by “Specs,” Captain Lee,
Dr. Brown, and other officers in uniforms which at the first glance
might have been taken for those of the New York Yacht Club, except for
the insignia on their caps which was a combination of Edestone’s private
signal and the letters L. P. M. Edestone, however, interrupted their
attempt to salute him.
“Please waive all ceremony,” he said. “We have wounded men here that
must be attended to.”
At this, Dr. Brown immediately came forward, and after ordering Lawrence
and James to the hospital gave a start as his glance fell upon Edestone.
“You did not tell me that you yourself were wounded, sir,” he exclaimed;
and then for the first time Edestone discovered that his face, hands,
and clothing were covered with blood which was streaming from a wound
above his temple.
He was about to permit himself also to be examined, when there was heard
from below the detonation of one of the Kaiser’s big mortars; and
pulling away from the Doctor, he called an excited order to “Specs”:
“Throw on your full charge, and lift her as fast as you can!”
He ran to the gangway in time to see the wire carried up to a great
height by the ball from the mortar settling down across the Little Peace
Maker about midships. It was falling now, and would soon come in contact
with the ship.
When it did, there was a slight jar perceptible, but no such result as
the enemy had hoped. The wire was so quickly fused, accompanying an
explosion giving out an intense light, that it seemed to shoot to the
earth like a streak of lightning, setting fire to or knocking down
everything that lay in its path.
Another and another mortar shot followed until the sky seemed to be
filled with falling wires which were swinging, twisting, and snapping
above him. The Little Peace Maker was the centre of an electrical
storm, and was sending back by every wire messages of death to those who
were striving to bring her down.
The ship was rising very rapidly now, however, and almost before
Edestone had time to sing out, “Steady now, as you are,” she was 3000
feet above the German capital, and out of range of the wire-throwers.