THE MOVING FINGER WRITES
The condition of affairs in the Atlas Building lasted long enough to carry
the matter up to the experts in the employ of the companies; that is to
say, until about three o'clock the following morning. Then, without
reason, and all at once, the whole building from top to bottom was a blaze
of incandescent light.
One of the men, stepping to the nearest telephone, unhooked the receiver.
To his ear came the low busy hum of a live wire. Somebody touched a bell
button, and the head janitor, running joyfully, two steps at a time, from
his lair, cried out that his bell had rung.
The little group of workmen and experts nodded in a competent and
satisfied manner, and began leisurely to pack their tools as though at the
successful completion of a long and difficult job.
But every man jack of them knew perfectly well that the electrical
apparatus of the building was now in exactly the same condition as it had
been the evening before. No repair work had followed a futile
investigation.
As the group moved toward the outer air, the head repair man quietly
dropped behind. Surreptitiously he applied the slender cords of his pocket
ammeter to the zinc and carbon of the dead batteries concerning whose
freshness he and his assistant had argued. The delicate needle leaped
forward, quivered like a snake's tongue, and hovered over a number.
"Fifteen," read the repair man; and then, after a moment: "Hell!"
The daily business, therefore, opened normally. The elevators shot from
floor to floor; the telephones rang; the call-bells buzzed, and all was
well. At six o'clock came the scrub-woman; at half past seven the office
boys; at eight the clerks; a little later some of the heads; and precisely
at nine Malachi McCarthy, as was his invariable habit.
As the bulky form of the political boss pushed around the leaves of the
revolving door, the elevator starter glanced at his watch. This was not to
determine if McCarthy was on time, but to see if the watch was right.
McCarthy had recovered his good humor. He threw a joke at the negro
polishing the brass, and paused genially to exchange a word with the
elevator starter.
"Worked until about three o'clock," the latter answered a question. "Got
it fixed all right. No, they didn't say what was the matter. Something to
do with the wires, I suppose."
"Most like," agreed McCarthy.
At this moment an elevator dropped from above and came to rest, like a
swift bird alighting. The doors parted to let out a young man wearing the
cap of the United Wireless.
"Good morning, Mr. McCarthy," this young man remarked in passing. "Aren't
going into the sign-painting business, are you?" He laughed.
"What ye givin' us, Mike?" demanded McCarthy.
The young man wheeled to include the elevator starter in the joke.
"Air was full of dope most of last night from some merry little jester
working a toy, home-made. He just kept repeating the same thing--something
about 'McCarthy, at six o'clock you shall have a sign given unto you. It
works,' over and over all night. Some new advertising dodge, I reckon.
Didn't know but you were the McCarthy and were getting a present from some
admiring constituent."
He threw back his head and laughed, but McCarthy's ready anger rose.
"Where did the stuff come from?"
"Out of the fresh air," replied the operator. "From most anywhere inside
the zone of communication."
"Couldn't you tell who sent it?"
"No way. It wasn't signed. Come from quite a distance, though."
"How can you tell that?"
"You can tell by the way it sounds. Say, they ought to be a law about
these amatoors cluttering up the air this way. Sometimes I got to pick my
own dope out of a dozen or fifteen messages all ticking away in my
headpiece at once."
"I know the crazy slob what sent 'em, all right, all right," growled
McCarthy. "He's nutty for fair."
"Well, if he's nutty, I wish you'd hurry his little trip to Matteawan,"
complained the operator, turning away.
The boss went to his office, where he established himself behind his
table-top desk. There all day he conducted a leisurely business of
mysterious import, sitting where the cool autumn breeze from the river
brought its refreshment. His desk top held no papers; the writing
materials lay undisturbed. Sometimes the office contained half a dozen
people. Sometimes it was quite empty, and McCarthy sat drumming his blunt
fingers on the window-sill, chewing a cigar, and gazing out over the city
he owned.
There were two other, inner, offices to McCarthy's establishment, in which
sat a private secretary and an office boy. Occasionally McCarthy, with
some especial visitor, retired to one of these for a more confidential
conversation. The secretary seemed always very busy; the office boy was
often in the street. At noon McCarthy took lunch at a small round table in
the cafe below. When he reappeared at the elevator shaft, the elevator
starter again verified his watch. Malachi McCarthy had but the one virtue
of accuracy, and that had to do with matters of time. At five minutes of
six he reached for his hat; at three minutes of six he boarded the
elevator.
"Runs all right to-day, Sam," he remarked genially to the boy whom he had
half throttled the evening before.
He stood for a moment in the entrance of the building, enjoying the sight
of the crowds hurrying to their cars, the elevated, the subway, and the
ferries. The clang and roar of the city pleased his senses, as a vessel
vibrates to its master tone. McCarthy was feeling largely paternal as he
stepped toward the corner, for to a great extent the destinies of these
people were in his hands.
"Easy marks!" was his philanthropic expression of this sentiment.
At the corner he stopped for a car. He glanced up at the clock of the
Metropolitan tower. The bronze hand pointed to the stroke of six. As he
looked, the first note of the quarter chimes rang out. The car swung the
corner and headed down the street. McCarthy stepped forward. The sweet
chimes ceased their fourfold phrasing, and the great bell began its spaced
and solemn booming.
_One!--Two!--Three!--Four!--Five!--Six!_ McCarthy counted. At the
recollection of a crazy message from the Unknown, he smiled. He stepped
forward to hold up his hand at the car. Somewhat to his surprise the car
had already stopped some twenty feet away.
McCarthy picked his way to the car.
"Wonder you wouldn't stop at a crossing," he growled, swinging aboard.
"Juice give out," explained the motorman.
McCarthy clambered aboard and sat down in a comfortably filled car. Up and
down the perspective of the street could be seen other cars, also stalled.
Ten minutes slipped by; then Malachi McCarthy grew impatient. With a
muttered growl he rose, elbowed his way through the strap-hangers, and
stepped to the street. A row of idle taxicabs stood in front of the Atlas
Building. Into the first of these bounced McCarthy, throwing his address
to the expectant chauffeur.
The man hopped down from his box, threw on the coil switch and ran to the
front. He turned the engine over the compression, but no explosion
followed. He repeated the effort a dozen times. Then, grasping the
starting handle with a firmer grip, he "whirled" the engine--without
result.
"What's the matter? Can't you make her go?" demanded McCarthy, thrusting
his head from the door.
"Will you please listen, sir, and see if you hear a buzz when I turn her
over?" requested the chauffeur.
"I don't hear nothing," was the verdict.
"I'm sorry, but you'll have to take another cab," then said the man. "My
coil's gone back on me."
McCarthy impatiently descended, entered the next taxi in line, and
repeated the same experience. By now the other chauffeurs, noticing the
predicament of their brethren, were anxiously and perspiringly at work.
Not an engine answered the call of the road! A passing truck driver,
grinning from ear to ear, drove slowly down the line, dealing out the
ancient jests rescued for the occasion from an oblivion to which the
perfection of the automobile had consigned them.
McCarthy added his mite; he was beginning to feel himself the victim of a
series of nagging impertinences, which he resented after his kind.
"If," said he, "your company would put out something on the street besides
a bunch of retired grist-mills with clock dials hitched on to them, you
might be able to give the public some service. I've got lots of time.
Don't hurry through your afternoon exercise on my account. Just buy a
lawn-mower and a chatelaine watch apiece--you'd do just as well."
By now every man had his battery box open, McCarthy left them, puzzling
over the singular failure of the electrical apparatus, which is the
nervous system of the modern automobile.
He turned into Fifth Avenue. An astonishing sight met his eyes.
The old days had returned. The center of the long roadway, down which
ordinarily a long file of the purring monsters of gasoline creep and dash,
shouldering aside the few hansoms and victorias remaining from a bygone
age, now showed but a swinging slashing trot of horses.
Hansoms, hacks, broughams; up-raised whips, whirling in signal; the spat
spat of horses' hoofs; all the obsolescent vehicles that ordinarily doze
in hope along the stands of the side streets; it was a gay sight of the
past raised again for the moment to reality by the same mysterious blight
that had shadowed the Atlas Building the night before.
Along the curbs, where they had been handpushed under direction from the
traffic squad, stood an unbroken line of automobiles. And the hood of each
was raised for the eager tinkering of its chauffeur. Past them streamed
the horses, and the faces of their drivers were illumined by broad grins.
McCarthy looked about him for a hansom. There was none unengaged. In fact,
the boss soon determined that many others, like himself, were waiting for
a chance at the first vacant one. Reluctantly he made up his mind to walk.
He glanced up at the tower of the Metropolitan Building; then stared in
astonishment. The hands of the great dial were still perpendicular--the
hour indicated was still six o'clock!