|HOARSE, raucous-voiced newsboys were crying the “extras” soon after
midnight. They were doing a thriving business. The destruction of the
great Reynolds plant, more spectacular and more appalling than any
previous deed perpetrated by the secret enemies of the American people,
was to drive even the most sanguine and indifferent citizen to a full
realizaton of the peril that stalked him and his fellow-man throughout
the land. Complacent security was at last to sustain a shock it could
not afford to scorn. Up there in the hills of Jersey a bombardment had
taken place that rivalled in violence, if not in human toll, the most
vivid descriptions of shell-carnage on the dripping fronts of France.
Huge but vague headlines screamed into the faces of quick-breathing men
and wide-eyed women the first details of the great disaster across the
River.
Night-farers, threading the streets, paused in their round of pleasure
to gulp down the bitter thing that came up into their throats--a sick
thing called Fear. From nearly every doorway in the city, some one
issued forth, bleak-eyed and anxious, to hail the scurrying newsboys.
The distant roar of the shells had roused the millions in Manhattan;
windows rattled, the frailer dwellings rocked on thin foundations. It
was not until the clash of heavy artillery swept up to the city on
the wind from the west that the serene, contemptuous denizens of the
greatest city in the world cast off their mask of indifference and rose
as one person to ask the vital question: Are the U-Boats in the Harbour
at last?
An elderly man, two women, and a sallow-faced man of thirty sat by the
windows at the top of a lofty apartment building on the Upper West Side.
For an hour they had been sitting there, listening, and looking always
to the west, out over the dark and sombre Hudson. Father, mother,
daughter and son. The first explosion jarred the great building in which
they were securely housed.
“Ah!” sighed the old man, and it was a sigh of relief, of satisfaction.
The others turned to him and smiled for the first time in hours. The
tension was over.
Farther down-town two men in one of the big hotels silently shook
hands, bade each other a friendly good-night for the benefit of chance
observers, and went off to bed. The waiting was over.
Two night watchmen met in front of one of the biggest office buildings
in New York, within hearing of the bells of Trinity and almost within
sound of the sobbing waters of the Bay. Their faces, rendered almost
invisible behind the great collars that protected them from the shrill
winds coming up the canyons from the sea, were tense and drawn and
white, but their eyes glittered brightly, fiercely, in the darkness.
They too had been waiting.
In a dingy apartment in Harlem, three shifty-eyed, nervous men, and
a pallid, tired, frightened woman rose suddenly from the lethargy of
suspense and grinned evilly, not at each other but at the rattling,
dilapidated window looking westward across the sagging roofs of the
squalid district. One of the men stretched forth a quivering hand and,
with a hoarse laugh of exultation, seized in his fingers a strange,
crudely shaped metallic object that stood on the table nearby. He
lifted it to his lips and kissed it! Then he put it down, carefully,
gingerly,--with something like fear in his eyes. Scraps of tin, pieces
of iron and steel, strands of wire, wads of cotton and waste, and an
odd assortment of tools littered the table. Harmless appearing cans, and
bottles, and dirty packages, with a mortar and pestle, a small chemist's
scales, funnels and graduates stood in innocent array along a shelf
attached to the wall, guarded,--so it seemed,--by sinister looking tubes
and retorts.
The woman, her eyes gleaming with a malevolent joy that contrasted
strangely with the dread that had been in them a moment before, lifted
her clenched hands and hissed out a single word:
“Christ!”
They, too, had been waiting.
Thousands there were in the great city whose eyes glistened that
night,--thousands who had not been waiting, for they knew nothing of
the secret that lay secure and safe in the breasts of the few who were
allowed to strike. Thousands who rejoiced, for they knew that a great
and glorious deed had been done! They only knew that devastation had
fallen somewhere with appalling force,--it mattered not to them where,
so long as it had fallen in its appointed place!
Many a glass, many a stein, was raised in stealthy tribute to the hand
that had rocked the city of New York! And in the darkness of the night
they hid their gloating faces, and whispered a song without melody.
Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief! In spirit, at least, they touched
hands and thrilled with a common exaltation!
It was after one o'clock when the Carstairs' motor crept out of the
ferry-house at 130th Street, and whirled up the hill toward the Drive.
A rough-looking individual who loitered unmolested in the lee of the
ferry-house, peered intently at the number of the car as it passed, and
jotted it down in a little book. He noted in the same way the license
numbers of other automobiles. When he was relieved hours afterward, he
had in his little book the number of every car that came in from Jersey
between half past eleven at night and seven o'clock in the morning. It
was not his duty to stop or question the occupants of these cars. He
was merely exercising the function of the mysterious Secret Eyes of the
United States Government.
Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs were admitted to their Park Avenue apartment by
a tall, beautiful girl, who threw open the door the instant the elevator
stopped at the floor.
“Thank goodness!” she cried, a vibrant note of relief in her voice “We
were so dreadfully--”
“What are you doing up, Louise?” cried Mrs. Carstairs quickly. Her
husband frowned, as with annoyance.
“Where is Hodges?” he demanded. He stood stock-still for a moment before
following his wife into the foyer.
“He went out some time ago to get an 'extra.' The boys were in the
street calling new ones. He asked if he might go out. How--how terrible
it is, Uncle Dawy. And it was so near the Club, I--I--oh, I was
dreadfully worried. The papers say the shells fell miles away--Why, I
couldn't go to bed, Aunt Frieda. We have been trying for hours to get
the Club on the telephone.” She was assisting Mrs. Carstairs in removing
her rich chinchilla coat. Carstairs studied the girl's white face with
considerable anxiety as he threw off his own fur coat. The worried frown
deepened.
“Could you hear the explosions over here, Louise?” he asked.
“Hear them? Why, Uncle dear, we all thought the city was being bombarded
by warships in the river, it sounded so near and so terrible. Alfie and
I ran to the windows. It was just after eleven, I think. He called up
Central at once, but the girl was so frightened she could hardly speak.
She didn't know what had happened, but she was sure the Germans were
destroying the city. She said another girl had seen the Zeppelins.
Alfie went out at once. Oh, dear, I am so glad you are home. I was so
anxious--”
“My dear child, you should be in bed,” began her uncle, taking her hand
in his. He laid his other hand against her cheek, and was relieved to
find it cool. “You say Alfred went out--at eleven?”
“A few minutes after eleven. He waited until all the noise had ceased. I
assured him I was not the least bit nervous. He had been working so hard
all evening in your study over those stupid physics.”
“And he hasn't returned? Confound him, he shouldn't have gone off and
left you all alone here for two solid hours--”
“Don't be angry with him, Uncle Dawy,” pleaded the girl. “He was so
excited, poor boy, he simply couldn't sit here without knowing what had
happened. Besides, Hodges and two of the maids were up,--so I wasn't all
alone.” She followed them into the brilliantly lighted drawing-room.
“Here are the first extras. The doorman sent them up to me.”
Mrs. Carstairs dropped heavily into a chair. Her face was very white.
“How terrible,” she murmured, glancing at the huge headlines.
“I say, Frieda,” exclaimed her husband; “it's been too much for you. A
drop of brandy, my dear,--”
“Nothing, thank you, Davenport. I am quite all right. The shock, you
know. We were so near the place, Louise,--don't you see? Really, it was
appalling.”
“What beasts! What inhuman beasts they are!” cried the girl, in a sort
of frenzy. “They ought to be burned alive,--burned and tortured for
hours. The last extra says that the number of dead and mutilated is
beyond--”
“Now, now!” said Carstairs, gently. “Don't excite yourself, child. It
isn't good for you. You've been too ill, my dear. Run along to bed,
there's a sensible girl. We'll have all the details by tomorrow,--and,
believe me, things won't be as bad as they seem tonight. It's always the
case, you know. And you, too, Frieda,--get to bed. Your nerves are all
shot to pieces,--and I'm not surprised. I will wait for--”
A key grated in the door.
“Here he is now. Hello, Alfred,--what's the latest?”
His son came into the room without removing his overcoat or hat. His
dark eyes, wet from the sharp wind without, sought his mother's face.
“Are you all right, Mother? I've been horribly worried--thank the Lord!
It's a relief to see that smile! You're all right? Sure?”
He kissed his mother quickly, feverishly. She put her arm around his
neck and murmured in his ear.
“I am frightfully upset, of course, dear. Who wouldn't be?”
He stood off and looked long and intently into her eyes. Then he
straightened up and spoke to his father.
“I might have known you wouldn't let anything happen to her, sir. But
I was horribly worried, just the same. Those beastly shells went
everywhere, they say. The Club must have been--”
“Nowhere near the Club, so far as I know,” said his father cheerfully.
“We were all perfectly safe. Have they made any arrests? Of course, it
wasn't accidental.”
“I've been downtown, around the newspaper offices,” said the young
man, throwing his coat and hat on a chair. “There are all sorts of wild
stories. People are talking about lynchings, and all that sort of rot.
Nothing like that ever happens, though. We do a lot of talking, and
that's all. It all blows over as soon as the excitement dies down.
That's the trouble with us Americans.”
“America will wake up one of these days, Alfred,” said his father
slowly, “and when she does, there will be worse things than lynchings to
talk about.”
“Are your feet cold, Alfred dear?” inquired his mother, a note of
anxiety in her voice. “You've been tramping about the streets, and----
You must have a hot water bottle when you go to bed. There is so much
pneumonia--”
“Always mothering me, aren't you, good Frieda?” he said, lovingly. He
pronounced it as if it were Friday. It was his pet name for her in the
bosom of the family. “Warm as toast,” he added. He turned to Louise.
“You didn't mind my running away and leaving you, did you, Louise?”
“Not a bit, Alfie. I tried to get Derrol on the long distance, but they
said at the Camp it was impossible to call him unless the message was
very important. I--I--so I asked the man if there had been any kind
of an accident out there and he said no, there hadn't. I--asked him if
Captain Steele was in bed, and he said he should hope so. Don't laugh,
Alfie! I know it was silly, but--but it _might_ have been an ammunition
depot or something at the Camp. We didn't know--”
“Ammunition, your granny! They haven't sufficient ammunition in that
Camp,--or in any of 'em, for that matter,--to make a noise loud enough
to be heard across the street. How can you expect me to keep a straight
face when you suggest an _explosion_ in an Army Camp?”
“It's high time we stopped talking about explosions and went to bed,”
said Carstairs, arising. He put his arm across his wife's shoulders.
“We've had all the explosions we can stand for one night, haven't we,
dear? Come along, everybody. Off with you!”
“Hodges should be back any moment with the latest 'extra,'” said Louise.
“Can't we wait just a few minutes, Uncle Dawy? He has been gone over an
hour.”
The telephone bell in Mr. Carstairs' study rang. So taut were the nerves
of the four persons in the adjoining room that they started violently.
They looked at each other in some perplexity.
“Probably Hodges,” said Alfred, after a moment. “Shall I go, dad?”
“See who it is,” said Carstairs.
“Wrong number, more than likely,” said his wife, wearily. “Central has
been unusually annoying of late. It happens several times every day. The
service is atrocious.”
Young Carstairs went into the study and snatched up the receiver.
Moved by a common impulse, the others followed him into the room, the
face of each expressing not only curiosity hut a certain alarm.
“Yes, this is Mr. Carstairs' residence.... What?... All right.” He sat
down on the edge of the library table and turned to the others. “Must be
long distance. They're getting somebody.”
Alfred Carstairs was a tall, well-built young fellow of twenty. He
bore a most remarkable, though perhaps not singular, resemblance to his
mother. His eyes were dark, his thick hair a dead black, growing low on
his forehead. The lips were full and red, with a whimsical curve at
the corners denoting not merely good humour but a certain contempt for
seriousness in others. He was handsome in a strong, hold way despite a
strangely colourless complexion,--a complexion that may be described as
pasty, for want of a nobler word. His voice was deep, with the guttural
harshness of youth; loud, unmusical, not yet fixed by the processes
of maturity. A big, dominant, vital boy making the last turn before
stepping into full manhood. He was his mother's son,--his mother's boy.
His father, a Harvard man, had been thwarted in his desire to have
his son follow him through the historic halls at Cambridge,--as he had
followed his own father and his grandfather.
Sentiment was not a part of Alfred's makeup. He supported his mother
when it came to the college selection. Together they agreed upon
Columbia. She frankly admitted her selfishness in wanting to keep
her boy at home, but found other and less sincere arguments in the
protracted discussions that took place with her husband. She fought
Harvard because it was not democratic, because it bred snobbishness and
contempt, because it deprived the youth of this practical age of the
breadth of vision necessary to success among men who put ability before
sentiment and a superficial distinction. She urged Columbia because it
was democratic, pulsating, practical.
In the end, Carstairs gave in. He wanted to be fair to both of them. But
he was not deceived. He knew that her chief reason, though spoken softly
and with almost pathetic simpleness, was that she could not bear the
separation from the boy she loved so fiercely, so devotedly. He was
not so sure that filial love entered into Alfred's calculations. If the
situation had been reversed, he was confident,--or reasonably so,--that
Alfred would have chosen Harvard.
He had the strange, unhappy conviction that his son opposed him in this,
as in countless other instances, through sheer perversity. His mother's
authority always had been supreme. She had exercised it with an
iron-handed firmness that not only surprised but gratified the father,
who knew so well the tender affection she had for her child. Her word
was law. Alfred seldom if ever questioned it, even as a small and
decidedly self-willed lad. Paradoxically, she both indulged and
disciplined him by means of the same consuming force: her mother-love.
On the other hand, Carstairs,--a firm and positive character,--received
the scantiest consideration from the boy on the rare occasions when he
felt it necessary to employ paternal measures. Alfred either sulked or
openly defied him. Always the mother stepped into the breach. She never
temporized. She either promptly supported the father's demand or opposed
it. No matter which point of view she took, the youngster invariably
succumbed. In plain words, it was _her_ command that he obeyed and not
his father's.
As time went on, Carstairs came to recognize the resistless combination
that opposed him, and, while the realization was far from comforting,
his common-sense ordered him to accept the situation, especially as
nothing could be clearer than the fact that she was bringing her son
up with the most rigid regard for his future. She had her eyes set far
ahead; she was seeing him always as a man and not as a boy. That much,
at least, Carstairs conceded, and was more proud of her than he cared
to admit, even to himself. He watched the sturdy, splendid, earnest
development of his boy under the influence of a force stronger than any
he could have exercised.
Sometimes he wondered if it was the German in her that made for the
rather unusual strength which so rarely rises above the weakness of a
mother's pity. Once he laughingly had inquired what she would have done
had their child been born a girl.
“I should have been content to let _you_ bring her up,” said she, with a
twinkle in her eye.
While she was resolute, almost unyielding in regard to her growing son,
her attitude toward her husband was in all other respects amazingly free
from assertiveness or arrogance. On the contrary, she was submissive
almost to the point of humility. He was her man. He was her law. A
simple, unwavering respect for his strength, his position, his authority
in the home of which he was the head, rendered her incapable of opposing
his slightest wish. An odd timidity, singularly out of keeping with
her physical as well as her mental endowments, surrounded her with that
pleasing and,--to all men,--gratifying atmosphere of femininity so dear
to the heart of every lord and master. She made him comfortable.
And she was, despite her social activities, a good and capable
house-wife,--one of the old-fashioned kind who thinks first of her
man's comfort and, although in this instance it was not demanded, of his
purse. He was her man; it was her duty to serve him.
As her boy merged swiftly,--almost abruptly into manhood,--her
long-maintained grip of iron relaxed. Carstairs, noting the change, was
puzzled. He was a long time in arriving at the solution. It was very
simple after all: she merely had admitted another _man_ into her
calculations. Her boy had become a man,--a strong, dominant man,--and
she was ready, even willing, to relinquish the temporary power she had
exerted over him.
She was no longer free to command. Alfred had come into his own. He was
a man. She was proud of him. The time had come for her to be humble in
the light of his glory, and she was content to lay aside the authority
with which she had cloaked her love and ambition for so long. _His_ word
had become her law. She had two men in her family now. Slowly but surely
she was giving them to understand that she was their woman, and that
she knew her place. She had been for twenty-two years the wife of one of
them, and for twenty years the mother of the other.
Carstairs was rich. He was a man of affairs, a man of power and
distinction in the councils of that exalted class known as the leaders
of finance. He represented one of the soundest vertebrae in the
back-bone of the nation in these times of war. With a loyalty that
incurred a tremendous amount of self-sacrifice, he had offered all of
his vital energy, all of his heart, to the cause of the people. He was
on many boards, he was in touch with all the great enterprises that
worked for the comfort, the support and the encouragement of those
who went forth to give their lives if need be in the turmoil' of war.
Davenport Carstairs stood for all that was fine and strong in practical
idealism, which, after all, is the basis of all things truly American.
As he stood inside the study door, watching with some intensity the
face of his son, he was suddenly conscious of a feeling of dread, not
associated with the recent grave event, but something new that was
creeping, as it were, along the wire that reached its end in the
receiver glued to Alfred's ear. He glanced at his wife. She suddenly
exhaled the breath she was holding and smiled faintly into his concerned
eyes.
“Yes,--” said Alfred, impatiently, after a long pause,--“Yes, this is
Mr. Carstairs' home.... I am his son.... What?... Yes, he's here, but
can't you give me the message?... Who are you?... What?... Certainly
I'll call him, but... Here, father; it's some one who insists on
speaking to you personally.”
He set the receiver down on the table with a sharp bang, and
straightened up to his full height as if resenting an indignity.
[Illustration: 0051]
Carstairs took up the receiver. He realized that his hand trembled. He
had never known it to happen before, even in moments of great stress.
“_Yes_, this is Davenport Carstairs. Who are you, please?” He started
slightly at the crisp, business-like reply. “Bellevue Hospital? Police
surgeon--What? Just a moment, please. Now, go ahead.” He had seated
himself in the great library chair at the end of the table. “Yes;
my butler's name is Hodges.... An Englishman.... What?... What has
happened, officer?... Good God!... I--Why, certainly, I shall come down
at once if necessary. I--can identify him, of course.... Yes, tomorrow
morning will suit me better.... Hold the wire a moment, please.”
He turned to the listeners. “Hodges has been injured by an automobile,”
he said quietly. “I gather he is unconscious. You are nervous and upset,
Frieda, so you'd better retire. Leave this to--”
“Is he dead, Davenport?” she asked in a low horror-struck voice.
“Run along, Louise,--skip off to bed. I'll get the details and tell
you in the morning.” The girl swayed slightly. Her eyes were wide with
anguish.
“I--I shouldn't have allowed him to go out,” she stammered. “I--Oh,
Uncle Dawy!”
Mrs. Carstairs put her arm about the girl's waist and led her from the
room. Carstairs looked up at his son.
“I guess you can stand it, Alfred. He's dead. Instantly killed.” He
spoke into the transmitter. “Tell me how it happened, please.”
He hung up the receiver a moment or two later.
“Run down at the corner of Madison Avenue and 48th Street. There were
two witnesses, and both say that he was standing in the street waiting
for a car. The automobile was going forty miles an hour. He never knew
what hit him. Poor devil! Have you ever heard him mention his family,
Alfred? We must notify some one, of course.”
“No, sir,” said his son. “He seemed a quiet sort. The other servants may
know. Mother says his references were of the highest order,--that's all
I know. What a terrible thing to have--”
“We must not worry your mother with this tonight, my son. She's had
enough for today.”
“I should say so,” exclaimed Alfred, clenching his hands. He choked up,
and said no more.