The Sign at Six

  CHAPTER IV

  DARKNESS AND PANIC

  Probably the only men in the whole of New York who accepted promptly andunquestioningly the fact that the entire electrical apparatus of the citywas paralyzed were those in the newspaper offices. These capable citizens,accustomed to quick adaptations to new environments and to wide reaches ofthe imagination, made two or three experiments, and accepted theinevitable.

  Within ten minutes the _Despatch_ had messenger boys on tap instead ofbells, bicycles instead of telephones, and a variety of lamps and candlesin place of electricity. Everybody else in town was speculating why inblazes this visitation had struck them. The _Despatch_ was out after news.

  Marsden, city editor, detailed three men to dig up expert opinion on _why_it had all happened.

  "And if the scientific men haven't any other notions, ask 'em if it'sanything to do with the earth passing through the tail of the comet," hetold them.

  The rest of the staff he turned out for stories of the effects. Hisimagination was struck by the contemplation of a modern civilized citydeprived of its nerve system.

  "Hunt up the little stuff," said he; "the big stuff will hunt you up--ifyou scatter."

  After covering the usual police-station, theater and hotel assignments, hesent Hallowell to the bridge; Longman to the Grand Central; Kennedy,Warren and Thomas to the tubes, subways and ferries. The others he told togo out on the streets.

  They saw a city of four million people stopped short on its way home todinner! They saw a city, miles in extent, set back without preparation toa communication by messenger only! They saw a city, unprepared, blinkingits way by the inadequate illuminations of a half-century gone by!

  Hallowell found a packed mass of humanity at the bridge. Where ordinarilyis a crush, even with incessant outgoing trains sucking away at thesurplus, now was a panic--a panic the more terrible in that it was solid,sullen, inert, motionless. Women fainted, and stood unconscious, erect.Men sank slowly from sight, agonized, their faces contorted, but unheardin the dull roar of the crowd, and were seen no more. Around the edgespeople fought frantically to get out; and others, with the blind,unreasoning, home instinct, fought as hard to get in.

  The police were unavailing. They could not penetrate to break the center.Across the bridge streamed a procession of bruised and battered humanity,escaped from or cast forth by the maelstrom. The daylight was fading, andwithin the sheds men could not see one another's faces.

  Longman at the Grand Central observed a large and curious crowd thatfilled the building and packed the streets round about. They waited fortheir trains, and the twilight gathered. For ten minutes trains continuedto enter the shed. This puzzled Longman until he remembered that gravitywould bring in those this side of Harlem. None went out. The waitingthrong was a hotbed for rumors. Longman collected much human-intereststuff, and was quite well satisfied with his story--until he saw what ithad meant elsewhere.

  For in the subways and tubes the stoppage of the trains had automaticallydiscontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, inmortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their waypainfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephiticvapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. Whenrevived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over windrows of bodiesthere below.

  Through the gathering twilight of the streets, dusky and shadowy,flitted bat-like the criminals of the underworld. What they saw, thatthey took. Growing bolder, they progressed from pocket-picking toholdups, from holdups to looting. The police reserves were all out;they could do little. Favored by obscurity, the thieves plundered. Itwould have needed a solid cordon of officers to have protectedadequately the retail district. Swiftly a guerrilla warfare sprang up.Bullets whistled. Anarchy raised its snaky locks and peered red-eyedthrough the darkened streets of the city.

  Here and there fire broke out. Men on bicycles brought in the alarms;then, as twilight thickened, men on foot. Chief Croker promptlyestablished lookouts in all the tall towers, as watchmen used a hundredyears ago to watch the night.

  And, up-town, Smith cursed the necessity of reading his evening paper bycandle-light; and Mary, the cook, grumbled because she could not telephonethe grocery for some forgotten ingredient; and Jones' dinner party wasvery hilarious over the joke on their host; and men swore and their wivesworried because they had perforce to be very late to dinner.

  At eight o'clock, two hours after the inception of the curious phenomena,the condition suddenly passed. The intimation came to the various parts ofthe city in different ways. Strangely enough, only gradually did thelights and transportation facilities resume their functions. Most of thedynamos were being inspected by puzzled experts. Here and there theblazing of a group of lights, the ringing of a bell, the response of avolt or ammeter to test, hinted to the masters of the lightnings thattheir rebellious steeds again answered the bit.

  Within a half-hour the city's illuminations again reflected softly fromthe haze of the autumn sky; the clang of the merry trolley, the wail ofthe motor's siren again smote the air.

  Malachi McCarthy, having caught a ride on a friendly dray, arrived home.At eight ten his telephone bell for the first time jangled its summons.McCarthy answered it.

  "I'm Simmons, the wireless operator," the small voice told him. "Say!There's a lot of these fool messages in the air again. You know what theysaid last night about six o'clock, and what happened."

  "Let's have 'em," growled McCarthy.

  "Here she is: 'McCarthy, will you do as I tell you? Answer. Remember thesign at six o'clock.' It's signed 'M.'"

  "Where did that come from?" asked the boss.

  "Can't tell, but somewheres a long ways off."

  "How do you know that?"

  "By the sound."

  "How far--about?"

  "Might be anywhere."

  "Can you get an answer back?"

  "I think so. Can't tell whether my spark will reach that far. I can sendout a call for 'M.'"

  "Well, send this," said McCarthy. "'Go to hell.'"

  On the evening of the phenomena afore mentioned, Percy Darrow hadreturned to his apartments, where he had dressed unusually early, andby daylight. This was because he had a dinner engagement up-town. Itwas an informal engagement for a family dinner at seven o'clock; butPercy had been requested by one of the members to come at about six.This was because the other members would presumably be dressing betweensix and seven.

  The young man found a fire blazing on the hearth, although the evening waswarm. A graceful girl sat looking into the flames. She did not rise as thescientist entered, but held out her hand with an air of engagingfrankness.

  "Sit down," she invited the guest. "This is a fearful and wonderful timeto ask you to venture abroad in your dress clothes, but I wanted to seeyou most particularly before the rest of the family comes down."

  "You are a singularly beautiful woman," observed Darrow in a detachedmanner, as he disposed his long form gracefully in the opposite armchair.

  The girl looked at him sharply.

  "That is intended as an excuse or explanation--not in the least as acompliment," Darrow went on.

  "You would not be so obliging, if I were not--beautiful?" shot back thegirl. "That is indeed not complimentary!"

  "I should be exactly as obliging," amended Darrow lazily, "but I shouldnot feel so generally satisfied and pleased and rewarded in advance. Ishould have more of a feeling of virtue, and less of one of pleasure."

  "I see," said the girl, her brows still level. "Then I suppose you arenot interested in what I might ask you as one human being to another!"

  "Pardon me, Helen," interrupted Darrow, with unusual decision. "That isjust what I am interested in--you as a human being, a delicious,beautiful, feminine, human being who could mean half the createduniverse to a lucky man."

  "But not the whole--"

  "No, not the whole," mused Darrow, relaxing to his old indolent attitude."You see," he roused himself to explain, "I a
m a scientist, for instance.You could not be a scientist; you have not the training."

  "Nor the brains," interposed Helen Warford, a trifle bitterly.

  "Nor the kind of brains," amended Darrow. "I have enough of that sortmyself," he added. He leaned forward, a hunger leaping in the depths ofhis brown eyes. "Helen," he pleaded, "can't you see how we need eachother?"

  But the girl shut both her eyes, and shook her head vigorously.

  "Unless people can be _everything_ to each other, they should benothing--people like us," said she.

  Darrow sighed and leaned back.

  "I feel that way, but the devil of it is I can't think it," said he. Thenafter a pause: "What is it you want of me, Helen? I'm ready."

  She sat up straight, and clasped her hands.

  "It's Jack," said she.

  "What's the matter with Jack?"

  "Everything--and nothing. He's just out of college. This fall he must goto work. Father wants him to go into an office. Jack doesn't care much,and will drift into the office unless somebody stops him."

  "Well?" said Darrow.

  "An office will ruin him. He isn't in the least interested in the thingsthey do in offices; and he's too high-spirited to settle down to a grind."

  "He's like you in spirit, Helen," said Darrow. "What is he interested in?"

  "He's interested in you."

  "What!" cried Darrow. "Wish it were a family trait."

  "He thinks you are wonderful, and he knows all about all your adventuresand voyages with Doctor Schermerhorn. He admires the way you look and actand talk. I suspect him of trying to imitate you." Helen's eyes gleamedwith amusement.

  "Can't you see how we need each other?"]

  Darrow smiled his slow and languid smile.

  "The last time I saw Jack he stood six feet and weighed about one hundredand eight-five pounds," he pointed out.

  "The imitation is funny," admitted Helen, "but based on genuineadmiration."

  "What do you want me to do with him?" drawled Darrow.

  "I thought you could take him in with you; get him started at somethingscientific; something that would interest and absorb him, and somethingthat would not leave all his real energies free for mischief."

  Darrow leaned his head against the back of the chair and laughed softly.So long did his amusement continue that Helen at length brought him rathersharply to account.

  "I was merely admiring," then exclaimed Darrow, "the delicious femininityof the proposal. It displays at once such really remarkable insight intothe psychological needs of another human being, and such abysmal ignoranceof the demands of what we are pleased to call science."

  "You are the most superior and exasperating and conceited man I know!"cried Helen. "I am sorry I asked you. I'd like to know what there is sosilly in my remarks!"

  "Jack is physically very strong; he is most courageous; he has a gooddisposition, a gentleman's code, and an eager likable nature. I gatherfurther that he does me the honor of admiring me personally. He hasreceived a general, not a special, college education."

  "Well!" challenged Helen.

  "Barring the last, these are exactly the qualifications of a goodbull-terrier."

  "Oh!" cried the girl indignantly, and half rising. "You are insulting!"

  "No," denied Darrow. "Not that--never to you, Helen, and you know it!I'm merely talking sense. Leaving aside the minor consideration that Iam myself looking for employment, what use has a scientist for abull-terrier? Jack has no aptitude for science; he has had none of theaccurate training absolutely essential to science. He probably wouldn'tbe interested in science. At the moment he happens to admire me, andI'm mighty glad and proud that it is so. But that doesn't help. If Ihappened to be a saloon man, Jack would quite as cheerfully want to bea barkeeper. I'd do anything in the world to help Jack; but I'm not theman. You want to hunt up somebody that needs a good bull-terrier. Lotsdo."

  "I hate such a cold-blooded way of going at things!" cried the girl. "Youshow no more interest in Jack than if--than if--"

  Darrow smiled whimsically. "Indeed I do, Helen," he said quietly; "that iswhy I don't want to touch his life. Science would ruin him quicker than anoffice--in the long run. What he wants is a job of action--something outWest--or in the construction of our great and good city. Now, if I had apolitical pull, instead of a scientific twist, I could land Jack in aminute. Why don't you try that?"

  But Helen slowly shook her head.

  "Father and McCarthy are enemies," she said simply. She arose with an airof weariness. "How dark it's getting!" she said, and pressed the electricbutton in the wall.

  The light did not respond.

  "That's queer," she remarked, and pulled the chain that controlled thereading light on the table. That, too, failed to illuminate. "Somethingmust be wrong with those things at the meter--what do you call them?"

  "Fuses," suggested Darrow.

  "Yes, that's it. I'll ring and have Blake screw in another."

  Darrow was staring at a small object he had taken from his pocket. It wasthe electric flash-light he habitually carried to light his way up thethree dark flights at his lodgings.

  "Let me call him for you," he suggested, rising.

  "I'll ring," said Helen.

  But Darrow was already in the hall.

  "Blake!" he called down the basement stairway. "Bring lamps--or candles."

  The man appeared on the word, carrying a lamp.

  "I already had this, sir," he explained. "The lights went out some timeago."

  "Did you look at the--fuses?" asked Helen.

  "Yes, miss."

  "Well, telephone to the electric company at once. We must have light."

  Percy Darrow had taken his place again in the armchair by the fire.

  "It is useless," said he, quietly.

  "Useless!" echoed Helen. "What do you mean?" Blake stood quietly atattention.

  "You will find your telephone also out of order."

  Helen darted from the room, only to return after a moment, laughing.

  "You are a true wizard," she said. "Tell me, how did you know? What hashappened?"

  "A city," stated Percy didactically, "is like a mollusk; it dependslargely for its life and health on the artificial shell it hasconstructed. Unless I am very much mistaken, this particular molluskis going to get a chance to try life without its shell."

  "I don't understand you," said Helen.

  "You will," said Percy Darrow.

  Mr. and Mrs. Warford descended soon after. They sat down to dinner bythe light of the table candles only. Darrow hardly joined at all inthe talk, but sat lost in a brown study, from which he only rousedsufficiently to accept or refuse the dishes offered him. At abouteight o'clock the telephone bell clicked a single stroke, as thoughthe circuit had been closed. At the sound Darrow started, then reachedswiftly into his pocket for his little flash-light. He gravely pressedthe button of this; then abruptly rose.

  "I must use your telephone," said he, without apology.

  He was gone barely a minute; then returned to the table with a cloudedbrow. Almost immediately after the company had arisen from the board, heexcused himself and left.

  After he had assumed his coat, however, he returned for a final word withHelen.

  "Where is Jack this evening?" he asked.

  "Dining out with friends. Why?"

  "Will you see him to-night?"

  "I can if necessary."

  "Do. Tell him to come down to my room as near eight o'clock to-morrowmorning as he can. I've changed my mind."

  "Oh!" cried Helen joyously. "Then you've concluded I'm right, after all?"

  "No," said Darrow; "but if this thing carries out to its logicalconclusion, I'm going to need a good bull-terrier pup!"