I may have mentioned that it was customary for Hawkins and myself to
travel down-town together on the elevated six days in the week.
So far as that goes, we still do so; for it has come over me recently
that any attempt to dodge the demoniac inventions of Hawkins is about
as thankless and hopeless a task as seeking to avoid the setting of the
sun.
For two or three mornings, however, I had been leaving the house some
ten or fifteen minutes earlier than usual.
There had lately appeared the old, uncanny light in Hawkins' eye; and
if trouble were impending, it was my fond, foolish hope to be out of its
way--until such time, at least, as the police or the coroner should call
me up on the telephone to identify all that was mortal of Hawkins.
Three days, then, my strategy had been crowned with success. I had
eluded Hawkins and ridden down alone, the serene enjoyment of my paper
unpunctuated by dissertations upon the practicability of condensing
the clouds for commercial purposes, or the utilization of atmospheric
nitrogen in the manufacture of predigested breakfast food.
But upon the fourth morning a fuse blew out under the car before we
left the station; and as I sat there fussing about the delay, in walked
Hawkins.
He was beaming and cheerful, but the glitter in his eye had grown more
intense.
“Ah, Griggs,” he exclaimed, “I've missed you lately!”
“I hope you haven't lost weight over it?”
“Well, no. I've been busy--very busy.”
“Rush of business?”
“Um--ah--yes. Griggs!”
It was coming!
“Hawkins,” I said hurriedly, “have you followed this matter of the
Panama Canal?”
Hawkins stared hard at me for a moment; then I gave him another push,
and he toppled into the canal and wallowed about in its waters until the
ride was over.
Unhappily, my own place of business is located farther down upon the
same street with the Blank Building, where Hawkins has--or had--offices.
There was no way of avoiding it--I was forced to walk with him.
But the suppressed enthusiasm in Hawkins didn't come out, and I felt
rather more easy. Whatever it was, I fancied that he had left the
material part of it at home, and home lay many blocks up-town. I was
safe.
“Good-by,” I smiled when we reached his entrance.
“Not much,” Hawkins responded. “Come in.”
“But, my dear fellow----”
“You come,” commanded the inventor. “There's something in here I want
you to see.”
He led me in and past the line of elevators.
So we were not going up to his offices! We seemed to be heading for the
cigar booth, and for a moment I fancied that Hawkins had discovered a
new brand and was going to treat me; but he piloted me farther, to a
door, and opened it and we passed through.
Then I perceived where we were. The Blank Building people had been
constructing an addition to their immense stack of offices; we stood in
the freshly completed and wholly unoccupied annex.
“There, sir!” said Hawkins, extending his forefinger. “What do you see,
Griggs?”
“Six empty barrels, about three wagon-loads of kindling wood, a new
tiled floor, and six brand-new elevators,” I replied.
“Oh, hang those things! Look--where I'm pointing!”
“Ah! somebody's left a packing-box in one of the elevator-shafts, eh?”
Certainly, more than anything else, that was what it resembled.
At the first glance it appeared to be nothing more than a crude wooden
case about the size of an elevator car, standing in one of the shafts
and contrasting unpleasantly with the other new, shining polished cars.
“Packing--ugh!” snapped the inventor “Do you know what that is?”
“You turned down my first guess,” I suggested humbly.
“Griggs, what appears to you as a packing-box is nothing more nor less
than the first and only Hawkins Hydro-Vapor Lift!”
“The which?”
“The--Hawkins--Hydro--Vapor--Lift!”
“Hydro-Vapor?” I murmured. “Whatever is that? Steam?”
“Certainly.”
“And lift, I presume, is English for elevator?”
“The words are synonymous,” said Hawkins coldly.
“Then why the dickens didn't you call it a steam elevator and be done
with it? Wasn't that sufficiently complicated?”
“Oh, Griggs, you never seem able to understand! Now, a steam
elevator--so called--is an old proposition. A Hydro-Vapor Lift is
entirely new and sounds distinctive!”
“Yes, it sounds queer enough,” I admitted.
“Just examine it,” said the inventor joyously, leading me to the box.
There was not much to be examined. Four walls, a ceiling and a
floor--all of undressed wood--that was about the extent of the affair;
but in the center of the floor lay a great circular iron plate, some
two feet across and festooned near the edge with a circle of highly
unornamental iron bolt heads.
Beside the plate, a lever rising perpendicularly from the floor
constituted the sole furnishing of the car.
“Now, you've seen a hydraulic elevator?” Hawkins began. “You know how
they work--a big steel shaft pushed up the car from underneath, so that
when it is in operation the car is simply a box standing on the end of a
pole, which rises or sinks, as the operator wills.”
“I believe so,” I assented. “I think it's time now for me to be go----”
“That principle is fallacious!” the inventor exclaimed. “Consider what
it would mean here--a steel shaft sixteen stories high, weighing tons
and tons!”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, I have reversed that idiotic idea!” Hawkins announced
triumphantly. “I have had a hole dug sixteen stories deep, and put the
steel shaft down into it.”
It was about what one might have expected from Hawkins; but despite my
long acquaintance with his bizarre mental machinery, I stood and gasped
in sheer amazement.
“Now, then,” pursued the inventor. “I have had a steel tube made, a
little longer than the shaft, you understand.”
“What! Even longer than sixteen stories?”
“Of course. The tube fits the shaft exactly, just as an engine cylinder
fits the plunger. The elevator stands upon the upper end of the tube.
We let steam into the tube by operating this lever, which controls my
patent, reversible steam-release. What happens? Why, the tube is forced
upward and the elevator rises. I let out some of the steam--and the tube
sinks down into the ground! That iron plate which you see is the
manhole cover of the tube, as it were--it corresponds, of course, to the
cylinder-head on an engine.”
As the novelist puts it, I stood aghast.
It overwhelmed me utterly--the idea that in a great, sane city like New
York an irresponsible maniac could be permitted to dig a hole sixteen
stories deep under a new office building and then fill up that hole with
a shaft and a tube such as Hawkins had just described.
“And the people who own this place--did they allow you to do it, or have
you been chloroforming the watchman and working at night?” I inquired.
“Don't be absurd, Griggs,” said Hawkins. “I pay a big rent here. The
owners were very nice about it.”
They must have been--exceedingly so, I thought; nice to the point of
imbecility. Had they known Hawkins as I know him, they would joyfully
have handed him back his lease, given him a substantial cash bonus to
boot, and even have thrown in a non-transferable Cook's Tour ticket to
Timbuctoo before they allowed him to embark on the project.
It would have been a low sort of trick upon Timbuctoo, but it would have
saved them money and trouble.
“Well,” Hawkins said sharply, breaking in upon my reverie. “Don't stand
there mooning. Did you ever see anything like it before?”
“Once, when I was a child,” I confessed, “I fell while climbing a
flagpole, and that night I dreamed----”
“Bah! Come along and watch her work.”
“No!” I protested. “Oh, no!”
“Good Lord, why not?” cried Hawkins.
“My wife,” I murmured. “She cannot spare me, Hawkins, you know--not
yet.”
“Why, there isn't the slightest element of danger,” the inventor argued.
“Surely, Griggs, even you must be able to grasp that. Can't you see that
that is the chief beauty of the Hydro-Vapor Lift? There are no cables to
break! That's the great feature. This car may be loaded with ton after
ton; but if she's overloaded, she simply stops. There are no risky
wire-ropes to snap and let down the whole affair.”
“I know, but there are no wire-ropes to hold her up, either, and----”
Hawkins snorted angrily. Then he grabbed me bodily and forced me along
toward the door of his Hydro-Vapor Lift.
“Actually, you do make me tired,” he said. “You seem to think that
everybody is conspiring to take your wretched little life!”
“But what have you against me?” I asked mournfully. “Why not let me out
and do your experimenting alone?”
“Because--Lord knows why I'm doing it, you're not important enough to
warrant it--I'm bound to convince you that this contrivance is all that
I claim!”
Oh, had I but spent the days of my youth in a strenuous gymnasium! Had
I but been endowed with muscle beyond the dreams of Eugene Sandow, and
been expert in boxing and wrestling and in the breaking of bones, as are
the Japanese!
Then I could have fallen upon Hawkins from the rear and tied him into
knots, and even dismembered him if necessary--and escaped.
But things are what they are, and Hawkins is more than a match for me;
so he banged the door angrily and grasped the lever.
“Now, observe with great care the superbly gentle motion with which she
rises,” he instructed me.
I prepared for that familiar
head-going-up-and-the-rest-of-you-staying-below sensation and gritted my
teeth.
Hawkins pulled at the lever. The Hydro-Vapor Lift quivered for an
instant. Then it ascended the shaft--and very gently and pleasantly.
“There! I suppose you've trembled until your collar-buttons have worked
loose?” Hawkins said contemptuously, turning on me.
“Not quite that,” I murmured.
“Well, you may as well stop. In a moment or two we shall have reached
the top floor; and there, if you like, you can get out and climb down
sixteen flights of stairs.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely.
“This, of course, is only the slow speed,” Hawkins continued. “We can
increase it with the merest touch. Watch.”
“Wait! I like it better slow!” I protested.
“Oh, I'll slacken down again in a moment.”
Hawkins gave a mighty push to the controlling apparatus. A charge of
dynamite seemed to have been exploded beneath the Hydro-Vapor Lift!
Up we shot! I watched the freshly painted numbers between floors as they
whizzed by us with shuddering apprehension: 9--10--11--12----
“We're going too fast!” I cried.
Hawkins, I think, was about to laugh derisively. His head had turned to
me, and his lips had curled slightly--when the Hydro-Vapor Lift stopped
with such tremendous suddenness that we almost flew up against the roof
of the car.
That was the law of inertia at work. Then we descended to the floor
with a crash that seemed calculated to loosen it. That was the law of
gravitation.
I presume that Hawkins figured without them.
I was the first to sit up. For a time my head revolved too rapidly for
anything like coherent perception. Then, as the stars began to fade
away, I saw that we were stuck fast between floors; and before my
eyes--large and prominent in the newness of its paint--loomed up the
number 13.
It looked ominous.
“We--we seem to have stopped,” I said.
“Yes,” snapped Hawkins.
“What was it? Do you suppose anything was sticking out into the shaft?
Has--can it be possible that there is anything like a mechanical error
in your Hydro-Vapor Lift?”
“No! It's that blamed fool of an engineer!”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Do you blame him?”
“Certainly.”
“But how was it his fault?”
“Oh--you see--bah!” said the inventor, turning rather red. “You wouldn't
understand if I were to explain the whole thing, Griggs.”
“But I should like to know, Hawkins.”
“Why?”
“I want to write a little account of the why and the wherefore, so that
they can find it in case--anything happens to us.”
Hawkins turned away loftily.
“We'll have to get out of this,” he said.
He pulled at his lever with a confident smile. The Hydro-Vapor Lift did
not budge the fraction of an inch.
Then he pushed it back--and forward again. And still the inexorable 13
stood before us.
“Confound that--er--engineer!” growled the inventor.
Just then the Hydro-Vapor Lift indulged in a series of convulsive
shudders.
It was too much for my nerves. I felt certain that in another second we
were to drop, and I shouted lustily:
“Help! Help! Help!”
“Shut up!” cried Hawkins. “Do you want to get the workmen here and have
them see that something's wrong?”
I affirmed that intention with unprintable force.
“Well, I don't!” said the inventor. “Why, Griggs, I'm figuring on
equipping this building with my lift in a couple of months!”
“Are--are they going to allow that?” I gasped.
“Why, nothing's settled as yet; but it is understood that if this
experimental model proves a success----”
But my cry had summoned aid. Above us, and hidden by the roof of the
car, some one shouted:
“Hallo! Phat is it?”
“Hallo!” I returned.
“Air ye in the box?” said the voice, its owner evidently astonished.
“Yes! Get an ax!”
“Phat?”
“An ax!” I repeated. “Get an ax and chop out the roof of this beastly
thing so that we can climb out, and----”
Hawkins clapped a hand over my mouth, and his scowl was sinister.
“Haven't you a grain of sense left?” he hissed.
“Yes, of course, I have. That's why I want an ax to----”
“Tell that crazy engineer I want more steam!” bawled Hawkins, drowning
my voice.
“More steam?” said the person above. “More steam an' an ax, is it?”
“No--no ax. Tell him I want more steam, and I want it quick! He's got so
little pressure that we're stuck!”
We heard the echo of departing footsteps.
“Now, you'd have made a nice muddle, wouldn't you?” snarled the
inventor. “We'd have made a nice sight clambering out through a hole in
the top of this car!”
“There are times,” I said, “when appearance don't count for much.”
“Well, this isn't one of them,” rejoined the inventor sourly.
I did not reply. There was nothing that occurred to me that wouldn't
have offended Hawkins, so I kept silence.
We stood there for a period of minutes, but the Hydro-Vapor Lift seemed
disinclined to move either up or down.
Once or twice Hawkins gave a push at his lever; but that part of the
apparatus seemed permanently to have retired from active business.
“Shall we move soon?” I inquired, when the stillness became oppressive.
“Presently,” growled Hawkins.
Another long pause, and I hazarded again:
“Isn't it growing warm?”
“I don't feel it.”
“Well, it is! Ah! The heat is coming from that plate!” I exclaimed,
as it dawned upon me that the big iron thing was radiating warm waves
through the stuffy little car. “Your Hydro-Vapor Lift will be pleasant
to ride in when the thermometer runs up in August, won't it?”
Hawkins did not deign to reply, and I fell to examining the plate.
“Look,” I said, “isn't that steam?”
“Isn't what steam?”
“Down there,” I replied, pointing to the plate.
A fine jet of vapor was curling from one point at its edge--a thin spout
of hot steam!
“That's nothing,” said Hawkins. “Little leak--nothing more.”
“But there's another now!”
“Positively, Griggs, I think you have the most active imagination I ever
knew in an otherwise----”
“Use your eyes,” I said uneasily. “There's another--and still another!”
Hawkins bent over the plate--as much to hide the concern which appeared
upon his face as for any other reason, I think.
He arose rather suddenly, for a cloud of steam saluted him from a new
spot.
“Well,” he said, “she's leaking a trifle.”
“But why?”
“The plate isn't steam-tight, of course; and the engineer's sending us
more pressure.”
His composure had returned by this time, and he regarded me with such
contemptuous eyes that I could find no answer.
But Hawkins' contempt couldn't shut off the steam. It blew out harder
and harder from the leaky spots. The little car began to fill, and the
temperature rose steadily.
From a comfortable warmth it increased to an uncomfortable warmth; then
to a positively intolerable, reeking wet heat.
I removed my coat, and a little later my vest. Hawkins did likewise. We
both found some difficulty in breathing.
The steam grew thicker, the car hotter and hotter. Perspiration was
oozing from every pore in my body. Sparkling little rivulets coursed
down Hawkins' countenance.
“Hawkins,” I said, “if you'd called this thing the Hydro-Vapor Bath
instead of Lift----”
“Don't be witty,” Hawkins said coldly.
“Never mind. It may be a bit unreliable as an elevator, but you can let
it out for steam-baths--fifty cents a ticket, you know, until you've
made up whatever the thing cost.”
Bzzzzzzzzzz! said the steam.
“I'm going to shout for that ax again,” I said determinedly. “Ten
minutes more of this and we'll be cooked alive!”
“Now----” began the inventor.
“Hawkins, I decline to be converted into stew simply to save your
vanity. He----”
“Hey!” shouted Hawkins, dancing away from his lever into a corner of the
car and regarding the iron plate with round eyes.
“What is it, now?” I asked breathlessly.
A queer, roaring noise was coming from somewhere. The Hydro-Vapor affair
executed a series of blood-curdling shakes. From the edges of the plate
the steam hissed spitefully and with new vigor.
“That--that jackass of an engineer!” Hawkins sputtered. “He's sending
too much steam!”
For a moment I didn't quite catch the significance; then I faltered with
sudden weakness:
“Hawkins, you said that this plate corresponded to the cylinder-head of
an engine? Then the tube beneath us is full of steam?”
“Yes, yes!”
“And if we get too much steam--as we seem to be getting it--will the
plate blow off?”
“Yes--no--yes--no, of course not,” answered Hawkins faintly. “It's
bolted down with----”
“But if it should,” I said, dashing the streaming perspiration from my
eyes for another look at the accursed plate.
“If it should,” the inventor admitted, “we'd either go up to Heaven on
it, or we'd stay here and drop!”
“Help!” I screamed.
“Look out! Look out! Hug the wall!” Hawkins shrieked.
A mighty spasm shook the Hydro-Vapor Lift. I fell flat and rolled
instinctively to one side. Then, ere my bewildered senses could grasp
what was occurring, my ears were split by a terrific roar.
The roof of the car disappeared as if by magic, and through the opening
shot that huge, round plate of iron, seemingly wafted upon a cloud of
dense white vapor. Then the steam obscured all else, and I felt that we
were falling.
Yes, for an instant the car seemed to shudder uncertainly--then she
dropped!
I can hardly say more of our descent from the fatal thirteenth story. In
one second--not more, I am certain--twelve spots of light, representing
twelve floors, whizzed past us.
I recall a very definite impression that the Blank Building was making
an outrageous trip straight upward from New York; and I wondered how the
occupants were going to return and whether they would sue the building
people for detention from business.
But just as I was debating this interesting point, earthly concerns
seemed to cease.
In the cellar of the Blank Building annex a pile of excelsior and
bagging and other refuse packing materials protruded into the shaft
where once had been the Hawkins Hydro-Vapor Lift. That fact, I suppose,
saved us from eternal smash.
At any rate, I realized after a time that my life had been spared, and
sat up on the cement flooring of the cellar.
Hawkins was standing by a steel pillar, smiling blankly. Steam, by the
cubic mile, I think, was pouring from the flooring of the Hydro-Vapor
Lift and whirling up the shaft.
I struggled to my feet and tried to walk--and succeeded, very much to
my own astonishment. Shaken and bruised and half dead from the shock I
certainly was, but I could still travel.
I picked up my coat and turned to Hawkins.
“I--I think I'll go home,” he said weakly. “I'm not well, Griggs.”
We ascended a winding stair and passed through a door at the top, and
instead of reaching the annex we stepped into the lower hall of the
Blank Building itself.
The place was full of steam. People were tearing around and yelling
“Fire!” at the top of their lungs. Women were screaming. Clerks were
racing back and forth with big books.
Older men appeared here and there, hurriedly making their exit with cash
boxes and bundles of documents. There was an exodus to jig-time going on
in the Blank Building.
Above it all, a certain man, his face convulsed with anger, shouted at
the crowd that there was no danger--no fire. Hawkins shrank as his eyes
fell upon this personage.
“Lord! That's one of the owners!” he said. “I'm going!”
We, too, made for the door, and had almost attained it when a heavy hand
fell upon the shoulder of Hawkins.
“You're the man I'm looking for!” said the hard, angry tones of the
proprietor. “You come back with me! D'ye know what you've done? Hey?
D'ye know that you've ruined that elevator shaft? D'ye know that a
thousand-pound casting dropped on our roof and smashed it and wrecked
two offices? Oh, you won't slip out like that.” He tightened his grip
on Hawkins' shoulder. “You've got a little settling to do with me, Mr.
Hawkins. And I want that man who was with you, too, for----”
That meant me! A sudden swirl of steam enveloped my person. When it had
lifted, I was invisible.
For my only course had seemed to fold my tents like the Arabs and as
silently steal away; only I am certain that no Arab ever did it with
greater expedition and less ostentation than I used on that particular
occasion.