It had been with Potter as if he had stood upon a lofty height surveying
wonders and had fallen with incredible swiftness through darkness to
strike the ground with frightful impetus. He felt the shock of that impact
as if his physical body had been in collision instead of his soul....
_Defiled!_ The word was stamped in letters that burnt across his
consciousness; his brain groped and fumbled about it as if it were some
strange, monstrous thing no intelligence could grasp. Every other created
thing was obliterated.
That word stood isolated in the middle of his universe, and his thoughts,
mothlike, fluttered about it, singeing their wings in its flame. There was
no coherent thought, only dazed consciousness of an awful wound.
There came a rap on his door, which grew insistent. "Come in," he called,
mechanically, and a workman entered.
"Everything's ready. Maybe you'd like to look her over before you go
home."
"Eh?" said Potter. "What's that?"
The man repeated. "It's quitting-time," he added.
Quitting-time! It had been daylight when he entered his room; now darkness
had fallen. He had been unconscious of the unraveling of time.
"Hey, Mort, telegram for the boss," another voice called from the
machine-shop. Mort disappeared and presently placed the little yellow
envelope in Potter's hand. He opened it as an automaton might have opened
it.
"Leaving Washington to-day; arrive Detroit in morning," it said, and was
signed "Craig."
For a brief interval Potter was careless whether Major Craig ever arrived
or not. The whole matter seemed blurred, distant, as some vague memory....
Then came a sudden vivid clearness, a cold, painful clearness, akin to
that dreadful condition into which arrives a man who cannot sleep. There
was a white incandescence about his perceptions; something stark, sharply
distinct about realities. He leaped to his feet.
"Call the men here," he said.
The men came in, surprise showing on their faces.
"Boys," said Potter, "they're going to blow us up to-night."
The men burst into exclamation, interrogation.
"It's our turn," Potter said, and there was bitterness in his voice.
"German spies.... They're coming to-night. I've been--warned."
Perhaps he had it in his mind to make a request of them; perhaps he had
felt their loyalty to be such as to require no request of him in the
circumstances. None was needed.
"God help 'em if they come!" said Mort, savagely, and he spoke for all.
"They were going to send old Angus up with the shop," Potter said. There
was no feeling in his tone now; somehow he was without emotion. "Without a
chance for himself," he added.
"The damn sn'akin' blaggards!" growled Pat Cassidy. "L'ave it to us, sorr.
Gerrman spies, is it?"
"They're bringing explosives--TNT. Any man that doesn't like it can go
home--and nobody'll think the worse of him."
Pat faced the quartet of his fellow-machinists. "Think the worse of him,
is it? Is there a man here which the white liver of him wants to run from
a thafe of a Gerrman spy?... There is none, sorr. We're all Amerricuns
here, sorr, and, loike Amerricuns, we stand togither...."
"Have you a bit of a flag, now, Mr. Waite?" asked Mort. "Seems like we
ought to have one showin'."
"There's one in the locker, Mort. Run it up."
Wisdom would have asked the police for protection. It is not strange that
Potter and his men never thought of that. It was they who were being
attacked, and they felt themselves well able to manage the defense--that
and a little more. It was a thing characteristic not only of them as
individuals, but of their Americanism.
"Lights out, except the lamp Angus keeps burning--and keep quiet. I'll
stay here with Angus. The five of you scatter around the place; keep
hidden and--"
"Give 'ell to anythink that comes h'along," said Cockney Tom.
"Exactly," Potter agreed.
They armed themselves with implements of peace, with huge wrenches,
machinists' hammers, bars, and went out quietly. Presently old Angus, the
watchman, arrived. Potter would have sent him home, but the old man felt
himself one of them and entitled to his share in the matter. He remained.
Because of the isolated position of the hangar, down on the shore of the
lake, it was possible the plotters might make their attempt at any time
after the normal hour for the activities of the place to cease had
arrived. Hildegarde had not told Potter the hour she had heard named, so
there could be no moment during which vigilance could be relaxed. Potter
walked softly from window to window, watching, listening. Resolutely he
shouldered Hildegarde out of his thoughts; the suspense, the impending
danger, made it possible partially to do so. But not wholly. One might say
that she stood upon the threshold alertly waiting the slightest relaxation
of vigilance to slip in. And slip in she did more than once--to be ejected
after a sordid mental scuffle.
Potter's curious mental state persisted--that white light of clarity which
embraced everything. He did not seem to have to reason to reach
conclusions; if one could conceive of flames whose temperature was not
heat, but frightful cold; if one could conceive of those flames casting
their vivid, super-brilliant light so that it froze to ice crystal
everything upon which it fell, one might understand his sensations. That
and a silence as if the world had been dead a million years--a sense of
the dead silence of things in which the dropping of a pin would have
wrenched and reverberated around the globe! It had a nightmare quality
which lacked only a horrid terror to make it cross the hair-line between
reason and unreason....
Old Angus pottered about, a huge Stilson wrench clutched in his hand. The
others were invisible. Potter looked at his watch; it was ten minutes past
eleven. In a vague way he wondered if it were ten minutes past eleven on
that same night or if years had intervened.
He was peering through a window that faced toward the lake. Out of the
obscurity of a mist arisen from the lake emerged dark movement, and the
movement resolved itself into a black daub that bore resemblance to the
shape of a man. It was followed by a second black daub and by a third.
Potter watched them, every nerve tense as the strings of a violin. Were
they his own men walking about on sentry? He could not tell. He stepped
softly to the door at the opposite side of the building, opened it
silently, crept out, and made his way with cat-tread around the corner,
there to wait, crouching.
The black daubs stole closer. There was not even a whisper. One of them
knelt beside the hangar. There was a slight sound--the ignition of a
match--a shaded glow--then a tiny splutter.... Potter knew. His guard had
been passed; the enemy had set its bomb, had lighted its fuse. He arose
and leaped upon the kneeling man, nor did he know that as he leaped he
shouted.
The man upon whom he had sprang, surprised though he was, resolved into
dynamic action--soundless action. Locked together they rolled over and
over. Potter felt the impact as another man leaped upon them--but that
other, in the murk of the night and the fog, could not tell friend from
foe. Again Potter shouted. There were answering shouts. One antagonist
tore away and plunged into the mist; the other, thrusting a savage knee
against Potter's chest, broke the grip of his arms and rolled out of
reach. Both sprang to their feet, one in flight, the other in pursuit. But
Potter stopped. He remembered. Close beside him spluttered that fuse. He
leaped upon it, seized it, hurled the deadly thing toward which that spark
was crawling, far in the direction of the lake.... Now he was surrounded
by men--his own men.... And then came a mighty _cough_, as if the universe
itself had coughed with all the strength of its hidden forces. There was
an instant of light and fire, the impact of an irresistible energy.
Stunned, deafened, blinded, Potter was hurled to the ground....
"My Gawd!..." said a voice.
Potter struggled to his feet and stood reeling. "Are you there?... Is any
one hurt?" he asked.
The men crowded about him, shaken, trembling. They went inside and stood
staring at one another.
"My Gawd!... said Cockney Tom, again.
"They got through us," Cassidy said, stupidly.
"Most got yuh," Mort said, and cursed, "and us standin' around like bats."
"It's all right," Potter said, unsteadily. "It didn't come off."
Tom brought lanterns and they went out again into the night. Between the
hangar and the lake was a crater such as a dozen men might have dug in a
day of hard laboring. They circled it in widening circles. Potter stooped
to pick up a hat--and it was wet. At a distance Tom cried aloud, and they
gathered about him, awed to silence, for he held out mutely a human
arm....