by Philip Wylie
“I don’t know.”
“Then you didn’t talk to him. What did you do on your ‘walk to the road’?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You risked a dreadful death to burn your way out of here and then you did nothing? Daryl! I have been a fool—but one little glimmer of light irradiates all the passages of my mind. Soon the police will be here—eh? Perhaps they are even now waiting for me outside? Perhaps Baxter will be leading them, eh? Well—they cannot touch me. The mundane mind—and even Baxter’s mind—cannot cope with invisibility. Is that not so?”
“Perhaps.”
“You are not so sure?”
“I do not know.”
“You will see. Why do I linger here? Why do I not rush from the house? Because I could stay in the house for a week and not be found. Because they will not burn the house with you inside. Because if they did I could walk among them—no matter how numerous they were or how well armed—as I have walked among men for weeks—and I could escape when I chose, as I chose. Because I am air. Because I am a brain. Because I am destiny—and they are merely men. They can come in legions, surround the house, stick hat pins through every inch of space—and I shall go free.
“Why do I linger here? Because I am standing over the grave of my heart. Oh, I’ve been foolish enough. I’ve been sentimental. I’ve been Sampson and you’ve been Delilah—but the Philistines you can summon are not strong enough to bind me even when I am sheared of certain of my assets. Do you see?”
Daryl said nothing.
“Do you see?”
“I understand you better now.”
“I shall be content with that. You might have loved me.”
“And diverted you from your purpose.”
“Perhaps even that.”
“Then,” she said, “I will love you.”
“It is too late. I want no such bargain. I think that at last a wholly unsentimental William Carpenter has been born.”
“It is too bad.”
“It is my tragedy—and the world’s gain. The world will gain for me—you know.”
“I—I hope so.”
“But you are not sure. No one is sure but me.”
She heard him move in the room and felt his lips pressed lightly against her forehead.
“I’ll be going, now, Daryl.”
“Then—good-bye.” She could say no more. She had failed.
Outside everything was silent. There was no sign, had been no sign of the approach of help—although she had listened until her head ached. Then she remembered her promise to give a signal. She rose, crossed the room, picked up one of the lamps, threw it into the fireplace and put the rug that had been hanging over the hole on top of it. Carpenter might have interfered with her, but he did not. The lamp flared on the hearth. The rug partially smothered the flame. Smoke rose in the chimney.
He spoke again.
“You’re faithful to the last, Daryl.”
“Yes. I’m faithful. You may try to do this thing—you may do it—but while I live—and while there are human beings like me left alive—you will be battling against a wall of steel.”
He apparently looked at the blaze in the fireplace. “The call to arms, eh?”
She did not answer. She thrust her head through the window. “Come on—you! He’s here!”
She was not sure but that her answer would be silence. Unkind, austere, empty silence.
“Come on!” she shouted. “Oh, God, please bring somebody!”
Half an hour after her husband left the house Mrs. Quail provoked the first intelligent response from Baxter.
“What’s the matter? What’re you trying to get me up for?”
“Bromwell! Listen to me! Can you hear?”
“Sure.”
“Can you understand?”
“Sure.”
“What’s my name?”
“Dorothy Quail.” He had considerable difficulty with the pronunciation.
“All right. Now. Daryl telephoned.”
“Wassat?”
“Daryl called on the telephone.”
Baxter sat up slowly. He knit his brows, rubbed his face with a faltering hand, looked blankly at Mrs. Quail and drank the water she handed to him. She rushed to the head of the stairs and called to Amy to bring the coffee which was ready for him. He was sensible enough to wait until a cup had been brought and he had swallowed half of it.
“Daryl called?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Go ahead. Tell me about it.” His words were more articulate. “I believe I can follow you.”
“She is in a house in a town on Long Island called Mirror. A—wait a minute.” Howard Quail had anticipated his wife’s unreliable memory. She found the piece of paper. “A yellow gabled house on the sea shore about a mile from Mirror. She said that she was all right and she gave Howie directions for trying to get Carpenter. Do you understand?”
Baxter drew a heavy breath. “Do I?” He shook his head. “I do. Where’s Howie?”
“He started for police headquarters.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago. Maybe a half hour. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to get you around ever since. You must have taken a terrible lot of whiskey.”
“Yeah.” Baxter rose uncertainly, walked to the open window, and breathed deeply. Then he drank two more cups of coffee.
“Feeling better?”
“Not better. More conscious.”
“You’ll go there—won’t you?”
“Sure. Telephone for a taxi. I can’t trust myself out yet.”
Dorothy went to the phone but she could get no response to her frantic flashings.
“I guess that last explosion has finally put everything out of order. It was working a little while ago—thank heaven.”
“What explosion?”
“The Grand Central. He blew it up. It started a riot.”
“Oh.”
“Have some more coffee.”
“Thanks.” Baxter finished the beverage and then began a series of violent calisthenics. The dazed expression left his face. His eyes opened their normal distance and his irises began to focus. “Got to be going, Dot.”
“Thank you’re all right?”
“Will be. Where’s Mirror?”
She gave him directions. “There’s a mob somewhere in the middle of town. And now the telephone’s gone. I didn’t hear that blow up. Come on.”
She helped him down the stairs. He walked like a man trying his legs for the first time after a long illness. He was not the hero who could leap instantaneously from a sodden condition to mental and physical agility. He remained partly anesthetized by the liquor. He was able to walk, barely able to understand what was taking place.
Dorothy left him at the front door. He walked slowly west, his mind lashing his heavy sinews into a constant acceleration. He tried to hail a cab and when he was met by inattention or negation, he thought that his drunkenness made him appear a futile fare. So he continued to walk.
At Fifth Avenue he changed his direction to the south. The fog lifted a little from his mind. He became conscious that the city was in an unusual state. People rushed hither and thither. At one corner he saw a man run down by a flying automobile which did not stop—yet no protest was made by the passers-by and no effort to capture the culprit was evinced. Baxter puzzled over that. He hurried along the edge of Central Park. Other people, hurrying beside him, paid him not the slightest attention.
He felt in his pockets to see if his passes were safe, felt his hip to be sure his revolver was there. At Sixtieth Street a man with wild eyes rushed toward him from down town, hit another man in front of him, caromed over the gutter, leaped back on the sidewalk and ran on. Nobody seemed to notice that. Baxter began to feel that he was moving in an oppressive dream, and not in reality. He stamped his feet on the pavement and felt the resultant sting.
At the southeast corner of the Park where Quail had had his experience with the poli
ceman, he descended into the subway. The platform was empty. He waited a minute and then realized that there was no one in the change booth, no one in the news stand. It dawned on him then that the entire city was in a state of panic. He went up to the street. Three soldiers stood on the corner. He went up to them.
“I’m Baxter. Secret Service.” He fumbled for his papers and produced them. The men scanned them. “I’ve got to get transportation to Brooklyn.”
The corporal in charge returned the papers. “Where’d you get the breath, Colonel?”
“Never mind. This is government business. Get me a cab.”
There were numerous taxis at the curb, deserted by their drivers:
“Can’t take a chance,” the corporal said. “Take him down town, Weaver.”
“Yes, sir.”
If Quail had had the presence of mind to carry with him Baxter’s credentials, he would not have been stopped at the dead line which had been established along Fifty-ninth Street. Baxter got into the cab and the enlisted man started the motor. They went quickly along the guarded Avenue to the Library. There Baxter produced his papers again and was passed. The dead had been removed from the thoroughfare and a crew of white wings guarded by soldiers was hosing the paving.
At Thirty-fourth Street they were routed west around Madison Square. Baxter was, by then, almost fully in command of himself. He leaned forward and spoke to the driver.
“What happened?”
He was given a terse resumé of what the driver knew. It ended with the present status of affairs.
“The mob stopped at Madison Square. There’s supposed to be about two hundred thousand people there and around there. They come down mostly from the office buildings near the Grand Central after the blow-out. Half of them women. Couldn’t do a thing with it—all the way down the tear gas and water and even bullets just made them worse. They’re penned in now. Roped into that square. Building to building. Milling around. If they bust loose again it’ll kill half of them. The rest’ll trample them down. They’re sending men in little by little to get things quieted so they can let them out.”
Baxter whistled. “That bad?”
“Worse. You should have seen Fifth Avenue after they went by. It was piled up with red——”
“Never mind.”
They reached Headquarters. Baxter found an Inspector who could help him.
“I know about you. I believe the Chief will want you in Mirror. We’ll try to make it if you aren’t afraid of getting killed.”
“No.”
“You see—they were running ferries to Brooklyn. But I don’t know about it now. The bridges are jammed. I heard one of them is down. You can’t tell. We’ll take our chances.”
A police car carried them on. Lower Broadway was almost impassable. People were reluctant to make way for the car. When they turned off on a side street, however, Baxter realized the extent of the riot. A mob of people cast paving cobbles at the car. He had a glimpse of a second mob bursting through the plate glass front of some building. He had another glimpse of a squad of men in khaki frantically turning a machine gun on the face of an approaching wave of humanity.
Those things he saw in flashes—instantaneous openings of hell’s maw—things that no sane citizen could conceive as possible in his city. The Inspector added to the picture.
“The Grand Central business started it. There are thousands and thousands of people working around there. They poured down on the street—which wasn’t big enough to hold them and already cluttered up. When they saw—what they saw—they went wild. Down Fifth. In an hour, it seemed as if half the world was part of it. Nobody knows what’s happening. The telephone operators went little by little. Then the men in the power houses. Everything’s deserted. Everything at a standstill. By an hour ago it was out of control. They stopped the Madison Square mob—and fifty more sprung up. The chief went over to Mirror with Quail. That’s where we’re going?”
“Yes.”
“I heard the story. Is it true?”
“What?”
“About the bird that did all this being invisible?”
“Yes. It’s true.”
The car—which had been taking advantage of every open space for speed and which had pushed its way through the populous stretches, now stopped. In front of it was a roaring, running, blood-mad crowd of people. Above the tumult the driver spoke to Baxter and the Inspector.
“Near as I can get.”
“Right. This way, Baxter.”
A tug boat had pulled up to the pier across the street. Its stack and superstructure were visible over the heads of the people. With one accord they were pressing forward toward the shattered gates of the pier. They ran into a narrow funnel. Baxter watched them with amazement. There was no expression of sanity on a single face. Their one remaining thought, emotion, impulse was toward escape, instant escape by way of the boat.
The Inspector led him around the edge of the mob. They walked out on an adjacent pier. People were pouring aboard the tug. Its decks swarmed with them, it listed toward the side where they were embarking. Fully a hundred persons were in the water—the luckless who had been pushed off by their be crazed fellows. Many of those in the water could not swim and their unspeakably dreadful plight went wholly unnoticed.
The Inspector’s gesture attracted the attention of some one in the pilot house of the tug. He waved at them and nodded. Already the boat, which had scarcely touched shore, was being cast off. A new throng of people jumped on its rail. Many of them hung over the side. A few already aboard tried to pull them on, more of those on the ship tried to beat the others off—pushing them down, kicking at their precious handholds.
As the distance between the tug and the pier widened to an extent impossible to leap, those behind the front row made a last and united effort to reach the edge. The result was a cataract of human forms, spilled relentlessly into the water, their screams drowned in the greater clamor. Baxter had had time to note every detail of this frightful embarkation before the Inspector asked, “Can you swim?”
“Sure.”
“All right.”
It was fifteen feet or more to the water. The men dove side by side. They swam in their clothes. The tug drifted toward them. Some one made a hole in the mob on the deck. The Inspector and Baxter were the only two persons deliberately rescued by the boat—a circumstance due to the police officer’s uniform.
As soon as they were aboard the engines began to pound and the tug swung out on the river. Sometime later they landed on the relatively orderly opposite shore. The people on the boat merely rushed off heedlessly, without goal or purpose.
Baxter could not decide the length of time he had spent in Manhattan’s holocaust. He was sober now—the water had completed the task of returning him to his self-possession. His ears rang with the din he had left. His senses reeled. His eyes flashed back again and again the horror of the scene. He walked mechanically at the side of the Inspector.
The police station which they presently reached was as hectic and as disorganized as any of the other public offices in the city.
They managed to make known their need of an automobile. After a time one was provided for them. They enlisted a driver who knew the road to Mirror. People in Brooklyn were beginning to leave their homes—not in the frantic stampede of Manhattan’s millions—but with that agonizing haste that marks the war refugee.
Cars loaded with personal possessions were departing in every direction. However, as they moved painfully to the limits of the city, the opportunity for speed became greater. Occasional roadside wrecks attested the spirit of fear which was permeating the sister borough of Manhattan. The Inspector did not talk. He had taken it upon himself to get to Mirror with the ambassador of the President. He had nothing to say. The journey afforded ample material to occupy his attention.
They drove through a suburb which was on fire. Then they moved through a long stretch of peaceful estates. Had it not been for the helter-skelter passing of vehicl
es driven furiously, they could not have told that anything was amiss. Baxter began to think about Daryl; that thought crystallized his mind.
They reached the outskirts of Mirror, Long Island, at dusk. A bevy of police stopped them. The Inspector stepped out.
“Who’s in charge?”
“Captain Gilroy.”
“Gilroy!”
Some one brought the Captain. The Inspector addressed him. “I’ve brought Baxter.”
“Yes sir. I had instructions regarding him.”
“Which are?”
The Police Captain boarded the car. He spoke to the driver. “Through town and then turn to your left. When I give the word, douse your lights.”
They traveled for another two miles.
“Now.”
The lights went out. Presently the car stopped. The Captain conducted them along the road through the gloom. Presently he turned in between two trees. They crossed a front yard, walked through a ravine that was boggy. It reminded Baxter of similar experiences in France. Their objective was a grove of trees. When they gained it, without any words passing between them except whispered directions, the Captain went forward alone. Baxter waited beside a tree. Two forms came dimly from the region ahead.
“Baxter!”
He recognized Quail’s whisper.
“Quail!”
“Good boy! You made it.”
“What’s afoot?”
Quail waved his arm and whispered. “On the other side of that line of low stuff is the run-down yard of what once was an estate. In the center of it is the house. I’ve got men all around it——”
“But he could slip through.”
“Not with the number I have. She said she’d signal—smoke from the chimney—when he was inside. He may not be here. He may not have come at all. We have to take our chances. We’ve moved up slowly and tried to keep under cover from the rear. The place is surrounded—but there hasn’t been any smoke—so he may have come, seen us, and gone away.”
“Any sign of her?”
“The first of us saw a light in the house. Came from the second story. Window, I expect.”