He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river
that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save
in a way that stung. He was outside the world--"nothing!" as he said
bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him.
"The comet?"
"The comet----"
Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled
patronizingly at him, and asked:
"Well, Jim, are you scared?"
"No," said the messenger shortly.
"I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the
junior clerk affably.
"Oh, that was Halley's," said the president; "this is a new comet, quite
a stranger, they say--wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by
the way, Jim," turning again to the messenger, "I want you to go down
into the lower vaults today."
The messenger followed the president silently. Of course, they wanted
_him_ to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more
valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened.
"Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep
in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records.
Suppose you nose around down there,--it isn't very pleasant, I suppose."
"Not very," said the messenger, as he walked out.
"Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time," said
the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed
silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim
light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark
basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that
lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the
earth, under the world.
He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and
stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he
groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept
across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on
the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back
to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and
pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him
back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black
wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He peered
in; it was evidently a secret vault--some hiding place of the old bank
unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow
room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high
shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them
carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty.
He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on
the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he
found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred
years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and
with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure--and he saw the dull sheen
of gold!
"Boom!"
A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up
and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and
swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He
forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh
he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but
he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless
hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again
harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and
heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body
of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick
and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong,
peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell
fainting across the corpse.
He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the
stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep, with the
gate swinging free. With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to
the sub-vault. In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed and
re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another
guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in the
messenger's heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank.
The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and
stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced
about. He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling!
"Robbery and murder," he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the
twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his
desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they found him here alone--with
all this money and all these dead men--what would his life be worth? He
glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked
behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street.
How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was
high-noon--Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down,
then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in
his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily
against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight.
In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay
crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway
like refuse in a can--as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they
had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept
along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend,
stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He
met a business man, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too,
along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on
his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the
curb. A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed
motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a street car,
silent, and within--but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. A
grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his uplifted
hand: "Danger!" screamed its black headlines. "Warnings wired around the
world. The Comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gases expected.
Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar." The messenger read and
staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face
and sleevelets on her arms. On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced
girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her
lay--but the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way--the terror
burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang
desperately forward and ran,--ran as only the frightened run, shrieking
and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the
grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still.
When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the
benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself
in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and
thought the thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was
the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see.
He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go
insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a
famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat
back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the
street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights.
"Yesterday, they would not have served me," he whispered, as he forced
the food down.
Then he started up the street,--looking, peering, telephoning, ringing
alarms; silent, silent all. Was nobody--nobody--he dared not think the
thought and hurried on.
Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have
forgotten? He must rush to the subway--then he almost laughed. No--a
car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its
burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There
was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere
stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On
he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled
with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips;
on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at 42nd
Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He
came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past the Plaza and by the
park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing
past 72nd Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning
wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his
ears like the voice of God.
"Hello--hello--help, in God's name!" wailed the woman. "There's a dead
girl in here and a man and--and see yonder dead men lying in the street
and dead horses--for the love of God go and bring the officers----" And
the words trailed off into hysterical tears.
He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a
child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the
door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy
door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed
before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was
a woman of perhaps twenty-five--rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with
darkly-golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness,
she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt
beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she
had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like
him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from
hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as
she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He
was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face
trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. His face was
soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long
banked, but not out.
So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the
dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other.
"What has happened?" she cried. "Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence!
I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of
God,--and see----" She dragged him through great, silken hangings to
where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid
lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay
prone in his livery.
The tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm
until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors
racing through her body.
"I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet
which I took last night; when I came out--I saw the dead!
"What has happened?" she cried again.
He answered slowly:
"Something--comet or devil--swept across the earth this morning
and--many are dead!"
"Many? Very many?"
"I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you."
She gasped and they stared at each other.
"My--father!" she whispered.
"Where is he?"
"He started for the office."
"Where is it?"
"In the Metropolitan Tower."
"Leave a note for him here and come."
Then he stopped.
"No," he said firmly--"first, we must go--to Harlem."
"Harlem!" she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first
impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely
down the steps.
"There's a swifter car in the garage in the court," she said.
"I don't know how to drive it," he said.
"I do," she answered.
In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz rose
and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th Street on two
wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th.
He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray. She
did not look, but said:
"You have lost--somebody?"
"I have lost--everybody," he said, simply--"unless----"
He ran back and was gone several minutes--hours they seemed to her.
"Everybody," he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like
in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket.
"I'm afraid I was selfish," he said. But already the car was moving
toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem--the brown,
still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the
silence--the wild and haunting silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth
Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and
quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square
Metropolitan Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy
aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the
threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk.
The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and
addressed but unsent:
Dear Daughter:
I've gone for a hundred mile spin in Fred's new Mercedes. Shall not
be back before dinner. I'll bring Fred with me.