The Sign at Six

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beth Trapaga and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team

[Illustration: Helen]

THE SIGN AT SIX

By Stewart Edward White

With four illustrations by M. Leone Bracker

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE OWNER OF NEW YORK II THE SHADOW OF MYSTERY III THE MOVING FINGER WRITES IV DARKNESS AND PANIC V A SCIENTIST IN PINK SILK VI THE WRATH TO COME VII A WORLD OF GHOSTS VIII PERCY DARROW'S THEORY IX THE GREAT SILENCE X THE LIFTING OF THE SPELL XI THIRTY SECONDS MORE XII THE UNKNOWN XIII DARROW'S CHALLENGE XIV THE FEAR OF DANGER XV THE MASTER SPEAKS AGAIN XVI THE PROFESSOR'S EXPERIMENT XVII DRAWING THE NET XVIII CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED XIX PERCY KEEPS VIGIL XX THE PLAGUE OF COLD XXI IN THE FACE OF ETERNITY XXII THE MAN NEXT DOOR XXIII HOW IT ALL WAS XXIV WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD

CHAPTER I

THE OWNER OF NEW YORK

Percy Darrow, a young man of scientific training, indolent manners, effeminate appearance, hidden energy, and absolute courage, lounged through the doors of the Atlas Building. Since his rescue from the volcanic island that had witnessed the piratical murder of his old employer, Doctor Schermerhorn, the spectacular dissolution of the murderers, and his own imprisonment in a cave beneath the very roar of an eruption, he had been nursing his shattered nerves back to their normal strength. Now he felt that at last he was able to go to work again. Therefore, he was about to approach a man of influence among practical scientists, from whom he hoped further occupation.

As the express elevator shot upward, he passed a long slender hand across his eyes. The rapid motion confused him still. The car stopped, and the metallic gates clanged open. Darrow obediently stepped forth. Only when the elevator had disappeared did his upward glance bring to him the knowledge that he had disembarked one floor too soon.

Darrow's eye fell on a lettered sign outside the nearest door. He smiled a slow red-lipped smile beneath his small silky mustache, drooped his black eyelashes in a flicker of reminiscence, hesitated a moment, then stepped languidly forward and opened the door. The sign indicated the headquarters of the very modest commissionership behind which McCarthy chose to work. McCarthy, quite simply, at that time owned New York.

As Darrow entered, McCarthy hung up the telephone receiver with a smash, and sat glaring at the instrument. After a moment he turned his small bright eyes toward the newcomer.

"Hello, Perc," he growled. "Didn't see you. Say, I'm so mad my skin cracks. Just now some measly little shrimp called me up from a public booth. What ye suppose he wanted, now? Oh, nothin'! Just told me in so many words for me to pack up my little trunk and sail for Europe and never come back! That's all! He give me until Sunday, too." McCarthy barked out a short laugh, and reached for the cigar box, which he held out to Darrow.

Percy shook his head. "What's the occasion?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Just bughouse, I guess."

"So he wants you to go to Europe?"

"Wants me? Orders me! Says I got to." McCarthy laughed. "Lovely thought!"

He puffed out a cloud of smoke.

"Says if I don't obey orders he'll send me a 'sign' to convince me!" went on the boss. "He's got a mean voice. He ought to have a tag hung on him and get carried to the morgue. He give me the shivers, like a dead man. I never hear such a unholy thing outside a graveyard at midnight!"

Percy Darrow was surveying him with leisurely amusement, a slight smile playing over his narrow dark face.

"Talking to get back your nerve," he surmised cheerfully to the usually taciturn boss. "I'd like to know what it was got you going so; it isn't much your style."

"Well, you got yours with you," growled McCarthy, shifting for the first time from his solid attitude of the bulldog at bay.

"His 'sign' he promised is apt to be a bomb," observed Darrow.

"He's nutty, all right," McCarthy agreed, "but when he said that, he was doing the tall religious. He's got a bug that way."

"Your affair," said Darrow. "Just the same, I'd have an outer office."

"Outer office—rot!" said the boss. "An outer office just gets cluttered up with people waiting. Here they've got to say it right out in meeting—if I want 'em to. What's the good word, Perc? What can I do for you?"

Darrow smiled. "You know very well, my fat friend, that the only reason you like me at all is that I'm the one and only man who comes into this office who doesn't want one single thing of you."

"I suppose that's it," agreed McCarthy. The telephone rang. He snatched down the receiver, listened a moment, and thrust forward his heavy jowl. "Not on your life!" he growled in answer to some question. While he was still occupied with the receiver, Percy Darrow nodded and sauntered out.

CHAPTER II

THE SHADOW OF MYSTERY

Darrow walked up the one flight of steps to the story above. He found his acquaintance in, and at once broached the subject of his errand. Doctor Knox promised the matter his attention. The two men then embarked on a long discussion of Professor Schermerhorn's discovery of super-radium, and the strange series of events that had encompassed his death. Into the midst of the discussion burst McCarthy, his face red with suppressed anger.

"Can I use your phone?" he growled. "Oh, yes," said he, as he caught sight of the instrument. Without awaiting the requested permission, he jerked the receiver from its hook and placed it to his ear.

"Deader than a smelt!" he burst out. "This is a nice way to run a public business! Thanks," he nodded to Doctor Knox, and stormed out.

Darrow rose languidly.

"I'll see you again," he told Knox. "At present I'm going to follow the human cyclone. It takes more than mere telephones to wake McCarthy up like that."

He found the boss in the hall, his finger against the "down" button.

"That's three cars has passed me," he snarled, trying to peer through the ground glass that, in the Atlas Building, surrounded the shaft. "I'll tan somebody's hide. Down!" he bellowed at a shadow on the glass.

"Have a cigarette," proffered Percy Darrow. "Calm down. To the scientific eye you're out of condition for such emotions. You thicknecks are subject to apoplexy."

"Oh, shut up!" growled McCarthy. "There isn't a phone in order in this building two floors either way. I've tried 'em—and there hasn't been for twenty minutes. And I can't get a messenger to answer a call; and that ring-tailed, star-spangled ornament of a janitor won't answer his private bell. I'll get him bounced so high the blackbirds will build nests in his ear before he comes down again."

After trying vainly to stop a car on its way up or down, McCarthy stumped down a flight of stairs, followed more leisurely by the calmly unhurried Darrow. Here the same performance was repeated. A half dozen men by now had joined them. So they progressed from story to story until an elevator boy, attracted by their frantic shouts, stopped to see what was the matter. Immediately the door was slid back on its runners, McCarthy seized the astonished operator by the collar.

"Come out of that, you scum of the earth!" he roared. "Come out of that and tell me why you don't stop for your signals!"

[Illustration: McCarthy stumped down a flight of stairs.]

"I ain't seen no signals!" gasped the elevator boy.

Some one punched the button, but the little, round, annunciator disk in the car failed to illuminate.

"I wonder if there's anything in order in this miserable hole!" snarled
McCarthy.

"The lights is gone out," volunteered the boy; and indeed for the first time the men now crowding into the car noticed that the incandescents were dead.

While McCarthy stormed out to spread abroad impartial threats against two public utility concerns for interfering with his business, Percy Darrow, his curiosity aroused, interviewed the janitor. Under that functionary's guidance he examined the points of entrance for the different wires used for lighting and communication; looked over the private-bell installations, and ascended again to the corridor, abstractedly dusting his fingers. There he found a group of the building's tenants, among whom he distinguished Doctor Knox.

"Same complaint, I suppose—no phones, no lights, no bells," he remarked.

"Seems to be," replied Knox. "General condition. Acts as though the main arteries had been cut outside."

"Inside bells? House phones?" suggested Darrow.

The repair men came in double-quick time and great confidence. They went to work in an assured manner, which soon slackened to a slower bewilderment. Some one disappeared, to return with a box of new batteries. The head repair man connected a group of these with a small bell in the executive office. The instrument, however, failed to respond.

"Try your ammeter," suggested Darrow, who had followed.

The delicate needle of the instrument did not quiver.

"Batteries dead!" said the repair man. "Jim, what the hotel-bill do you mean by getting dead batteries? Go back and bring a new lot, and test 'em."

In due time Jim returned.

"These test to fifteen," said he. "Go to it!"

"Test—nothing!" roared the repair man after a moment. "These are dead, too."

Percy Darrow left the ensuing argument to its own warmth. It was growing late. In the corridor a few hastily-brought lamps cast a dim light. Percy collided against Doctor Knox entering the building.

"Not fixed yet?" asked the latter in evident disappointment. "What's the matter?"

"I don't know," said Darrow slowly; "it puzzles me. It's more than an ordinary break of connections or short-circuiting through apparatus. If one could imagine a big building like this polarized in some way—anyhow, the electricity is dead. Look here." He pulled an electric flash-light from his pocket. "Bought this fresh on my way here. Tested it, of course. Now, there's nothing wonderful about these toys going back on a man; but"—he pressed the button and peered down the lens—"this is a funny coincidence." He turned the lens toward his friend. The filament was dark.

CHAPTER III

THE MOVING FINGER WRITES

The condition of affairs in the Atlas Building lasted long enough to carry the matter up to the experts in the employ of the companies; that is to say, until about three o'clock the following morning. Then, without reason, and all at once, the whole building from top to bottom was a blaze of incandescent light.

One of the men, stepping to the nearest telephone, unhooked the receiver. To his ear came the low busy hum of a live wire. Somebody touched a bell button, and the head janitor, running joyfully, two steps at a time, from his lair, cried out that his bell had rung.

The little group of workmen and experts nodded in a competent and satisfied manner, and began leisurely to pack their tools as though at the successful completion of a long and difficult job.

But every man jack of them knew perfectly well that the electrical apparatus of the building was now in exactly the same condition as it had been the evening before. No repair work had followed a futile investigation.

As the group moved toward the outer air, the head repair man quietly dropped behind. Surreptitiously he applied the slender cords of his pocket ammeter to the zinc and carbon of the dead batteries concerning whose freshness he and his assistant had argued. The delicate needle leaped forward, quivered like a snake's tongue, and hovered over a number.

"Fifteen," read the repair man; and then, after a moment: "Hell!"

The daily business, therefore, opened normally. The elevators shot from floor to floor; the telephones rang; the call-bells buzzed, and all was well. At six o'clock came the scrub-woman; at half past seven the office boys; at eight the clerks; a little later some of the heads; and precisely at nine Malachi McCarthy, as was his invariable habit.

As the bulky form of the political boss pushed around the leaves of the revolving door, the elevator starter glanced at his watch. This was not to determine if McCarthy was on time, but to see if the watch was right.

McCarthy had recovered his good humor. He threw a joke at the negro polishing the brass, and paused genially to exchange a word with the elevator starter.

"Worked until about three o'clock," the latter answered a question. "Got it fixed all right. No, they didn't say what was the matter. Something to do with the wires, I suppose."

"Most like," agreed McCarthy.

At this moment an elevator dropped from above and came to rest, like a swift bird alighting. The doors parted to let out a young man wearing the cap of the United Wireless.

"Good morning, Mr. McCarthy," this young man remarked in passing. "Aren't going into the sign-painting business, are you?" He laughed.

"What ye givin' us, Mike?" demanded McCarthy.

The young man wheeled to include the elevator starter in the joke.

"Air was full of dope most of last night from some merry little jester working a toy, home-made. He just kept repeating the same thing—something about 'McCarthy, at six o'clock you shall have a sign given unto you. It works,' over and over all night. Some new advertising dodge, I reckon. Didn't know but you were the McCarthy and were getting a present from some admiring constituent."

He threw back his head and laughed, but McCarthy's ready anger rose.

"Where did the stuff come from?"

"Out of the fresh air," replied the operator. "From most anywhere inside the zone of communication."

"Couldn't you tell who sent it?"

"No way. It wasn't signed. Come from quite a distance, though."

"How can you tell that?"

"You can tell by the way it sounds. Say, they ought to be a law about these amatoors cluttering up the air this way. Sometimes I got to pick my own dope out of a dozen or fifteen messages all ticking away in my headpiece at once."

"I know the crazy slob what sent 'em, all right, all right," growled
McCarthy. "He's nutty for fair."

"Well, if he's nutty, I wish you'd hurry his little trip to Matteawan," complained the operator, turning away.

The boss went to his office, where he established himself behind his table-top desk. There all day he conducted a leisurely business of mysterious import, sitting where the cool autumn breeze from the river brought its refreshment. His desk top held no papers; the writing materials lay undisturbed. Sometimes the office contained half a dozen people. Sometimes it was quite empty, and McCarthy sat drumming his blunt fingers on the window-sill, chewing a cigar, and gazing out over the city he owned.

There were two other, inner, offices to McCarthy's establishment, in which sat a private secretary and an office boy. Occasionally McCarthy, with some especial visitor, retired to one of these for a more confidential conversation. The secretary seemed always very busy; the office boy was often in the street. At noon McCarthy took lunch at a small round table in the cafe below. When he reappeared at the elevator shaft, the elevator starter again verified his watch. Malachi McCarthy had but the one virtue of accuracy, and that had to do with matters of time. At five minutes of six he reached for his hat; at three minutes of six he boarded the elevator.

"Runs all right to-day, Sam," he remarked genially to the boy whom he had half throttled the evening before.

He stood for a moment in the entrance of the building, enjoying the sight of the crowds hurrying to their cars, the elevated, the subway, and the ferries. The clang and roar of the city pleased his senses, as a vessel vibrates to its master tone. McCarthy was feeling largely paternal as he stepped toward the corner, for to a great extent the destinies of these people were in his hands.

"Easy marks!" was his philanthropic expression of this sentiment.

At the corner he stopped for a car. He glanced up at the clock of the Metropolitan tower. The bronze hand pointed to the stroke of six. As he looked, the first note of the quarter chimes rang out. The car swung the corner and headed down the street. McCarthy stepped forward. The sweet chimes ceased their fourfold phrasing, and the great bell began its spaced and solemn booming.

One!—Two!—Three!—Four!—Five!—Six! McCarthy counted. At the recollection of a crazy message from the Unknown, he smiled. He stepped forward to hold up his hand at the car. Somewhat to his surprise the car had already stopped some twenty feet away.

McCarthy picked his way to the car.

"Wonder you wouldn't stop at a crossing," he growled, swinging aboard.

"Juice give out," explained the motorman.

McCarthy clambered aboard and sat down in a comfortably filled car. Up and down the perspective of the street could be seen other cars, also stalled. Ten minutes slipped by; then Malachi McCarthy grew impatient. With a muttered growl he rose, elbowed his way through the strap-hangers, and stepped to the street. A row of idle taxicabs stood in front of the Atlas Building. Into the first of these bounced McCarthy, throwing his address to the expectant chauffeur.

The man hopped down from his box, threw on the coil switch and ran to the front. He turned the engine over the compression, but no explosion followed. He repeated the effort a dozen times. Then, grasping the starting handle with a firmer grip, he "whirled" the engine—without result.

"What's the matter? Can't you make her go?" demanded McCarthy, thrusting his head from the door.

"Will you please listen, sir, and see if you hear a buzz when I turn her over?" requested the chauffeur.

"I don't hear nothing," was the verdict.

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to take another cab," then said the man. "My coil's gone back on me."

McCarthy impatiently descended, entered the next taxi in line, and repeated the same experience. By now the other chauffeurs, noticing the predicament of their brethren, were anxiously and perspiringly at work. Not an engine answered the call of the road! A passing truck driver, grinning from ear to ear, drove slowly down the line, dealing out the ancient jests rescued for the occasion from an oblivion to which the perfection of the automobile had consigned them.

McCarthy added his mite; he was beginning to feel himself the victim of a series of nagging impertinences, which he resented after his kind.

"If," said he, "your company would put out something on the street besides a bunch of retired grist-mills with clock dials hitched on to them, you might be able to give the public some service. I've got lots of time. Don't hurry through your afternoon exercise on my account. Just buy a lawn-mower and a chatelaine watch apiece—you'd do just as well."

By now every man had his battery box open, McCarthy left them, puzzling over the singular failure of the electrical apparatus, which is the nervous system of the modern automobile.

He turned into Fifth Avenue. An astonishing sight met his eyes.

The old days had returned. The center of the long roadway, down which ordinarily a long file of the purring monsters of gasoline creep and dash, shouldering aside the few hansoms and victorias remaining from a bygone age, now showed but a swinging slashing trot of horses.

Hansoms, hacks, broughams; up-raised whips, whirling in signal; the spat spat of horses' hoofs; all the obsolescent vehicles that ordinarily doze in hope along the stands of the side streets; it was a gay sight of the past raised again for the moment to reality by the same mysterious blight that had shadowed the Atlas Building the night before.

Along the curbs, where they had been handpushed under direction from the traffic squad, stood an unbroken line of automobiles. And the hood of each was raised for the eager tinkering of its chauffeur. Past them streamed the horses, and the faces of their drivers were illumined by broad grins.

McCarthy looked about him for a hansom. There was none unengaged. In fact, the boss soon determined that many others, like himself, were waiting for a chance at the first vacant one. Reluctantly he made up his mind to walk. He glanced up at the tower of the Metropolitan Building; then stared in astonishment. The hands of the great dial were still perpendicular—the hour indicated was still six o'clock!

CHAPTER IV

DARKNESS AND PANIC

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

Within ten minutes the Despatch had messenger boys on tap instead of bells, bicycles instead of telephones, and a variety of lamps and candles in place of electricity. Everybody else in town was speculating why in blazes 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's anything to do with the earth passing through the tail of the comet," he told them.

The rest of the staff he turned out for stories of the effects. His imagination was struck by the contemplation of a modern civilized city deprived of its nerve system.

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

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

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

Hallowell found a packed mass of humanity at the bridge. Where ordinarily is a crush, even with incessant outgoing trains sucking away at the surplus, 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 unheard in the dull roar of the crowd, and were seen no more. Around the edges people 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, and within the sheds men could not see one another's faces.

Longman at the Grand Central observed a large and curious crowd that filled the building and packed the streets round about. They waited for their trains, and the twilight gathered. For ten minutes trains continued to enter the shed. This puzzled Longman until he remembered that gravity would bring in those this side of Harlem. None went out. The waiting throng was a hotbed for rumors. Longman collected much human-interest stuff, and was quite well satisfied with his story—until he saw what it had meant elsewhere.

For in the subways and tubes the stoppage of the trains had automatically discontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, in mortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their way painfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephitic vapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. When revived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over windrows of bodies there below.

Through the gathering twilight of the streets, dusky and shadowy, flitted bat-like the criminals of the underworld. What they saw, that they took. Growing bolder, they progressed from pocket-picking to holdups, from holdups to looting. The police reserves were all out; they could do little. Favored by obscurity, the thieves plundered. It would have needed a solid cordon of officers to have protected adequately the retail district. Swiftly a guerrilla warfare sprang up. Bullets whistled. Anarchy raised its snaky locks and peered red-eyed through 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 promptly established lookouts in all the tall towers, as watchmen used a hundred years ago to watch the night.

And, up-town, Smith cursed the necessity of reading his evening paper by candle-light; and Mary, the cook, grumbled because she could not telephone the grocery for some forgotten ingredient; and Jones' dinner party was very hilarious over the joke on their host; and men swore and their wives worried 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 of the city in different ways. Strangely enough, only gradually did the lights and transportation facilities resume their functions. Most of the dynamos were being inspected by puzzled experts. Here and there the blazing of a group of lights, the ringing of a bell, the response of a volt or ammeter to test, hinted to the masters of the lightnings that their rebellious steeds again answered the bit.

Within a half-hour the city's illuminations again reflected softly from the haze of the autumn sky; the clang of the merry trolley, the wail of the 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 they said 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 the sign 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 send out a call for 'M.'"

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

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

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

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

"You are a singularly beautiful woman," observed Darrow in a detached manner, 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 a compliment," Darrow went on.

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

"I should be exactly as obliging," amended Darrow lazily, "but I should not feel so generally satisfied and pleased and rewarded in advance. I should 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 are not interested in what I might ask you as one human being to another!"

"Pardon me, Helen," interrupted Darrow, with unusual decision. "That is just what I am interested in—you as a human being, a delicious, beautiful, feminine, human being who could mean half the created universe 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 am 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 sort myself," he added. He leaned forward, a hunger leaping in the depths of his brown eyes. "Helen," he pleaded, "can't you see how we need each other?"

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

"Unless people can be everything to each other, they should be nothing—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. Then after 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 go to 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 things they 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 adventures and voyages with Doctor Schermerhorn. He admires the way you look and act and talk. I suspect him of trying to imitate you." Helen's eyes gleamed with amusement.

[Illustration: "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 hundred and eight-five pounds," he pointed out.

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

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

"I thought you could take him in with you; get him started at something scientific; something that would interest and absorb him, and something that 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 rather sharply to account.

"I was merely admiring," then exclaimed Darrow, "the delicious femininity of the proposal. It displays at once such really remarkable insight into the psychological needs of another human being, and such abysmal ignorance of 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 so silly in my remarks!"

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

"Well!" challenged Helen.

"Barring the last, these are exactly the qualifications of a good bull-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 I am myself looking for employment, what use has a scientist for a bull-terrier? Jack has no aptitude for science; he has had none of the accurate training absolutely essential to science. He probably wouldn't be interested in science. At the moment he happens to admire me, and I'm mighty glad and proud that it is so. But that doesn't help. If I happened to be a saloon man, Jack would quite as cheerfully want to be a barkeeper. I'd do anything in the world to help Jack; but I'm not the man. You want to hunt up somebody that needs a good bull-terrier. Lots do."

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

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

But Helen slowly shook her head.

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

The light did not respond.

"That's queer," she remarked, and pulled the chain that controlled the reading light on the table. That, too, failed to illuminate. "Something must 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 was the electric flash-light he habitually carried to light his way up the three 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 time ago."

"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 at attention.

"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 has happened?"

"A city," stated Percy didactically, "is like a mollusk; it depends largely for its life and health on the artificial shell it has constructed. Unless I am very much mistaken, this particular mollusk is 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 by the light of the table candles only. Darrow hardly joined at all in the talk, but sat lost in a brown study, from which he only roused sufficiently to accept or refuse the dishes offered him. At about eight o'clock the telephone bell clicked a single stroke, as though the circuit had been closed. At the sound Darrow started, then reached swiftly into his pocket for his little flash-light. He gravely pressed the 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 clouded brow. Almost immediately after the company had arisen from the board, he excused himself and left.

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

"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-morrow morning 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 logical conclusion, I'm going to need a good bull-terrier pup!"

CHAPTER V

A SCIENTIST IN PINK SILK

The next morning promptly at eight o'clock Jack Warford, in response to a muttered invitation, burst excitedly into Percy Darrow's room. He found the scientist, draped in a pale-pink silk kimono embroidered with light-blue butterflies, scraping methodically at his face with a safety-razor. At the sight the young fellow came to an abrupt stop, as though some one had met him with a dash of cold water in the face.

"Hello!" said he, in a constrained voice. "Just up?"

Darrow cast a glance through his long silky lashes at the newcomer.

"Yes, my amiable young canine, just up."

Jack looked somewhat puzzled at the appellation, but seated himself.

"Helen said you wanted to see me," he suggested.

Darrow leisurely cleaned the component parts of his safety-razor, washed and anointed his face, and turned.

"I do," said he, "if you're game."

"Of course I'm game!" cried the boy indignantly.

Darrow surveyed his fresh, young, eager face and the trim taut bulk of him with dispassionate eyes.

"Are you?" he remarked simply. "Possibly. But you're not the man to be sure of it."

"I didn't mean it as bragging," cried Jack, flushing.

"Surely not," drawled Darrow, stretching out his long legs. "But no man can tell whether or not he's game until he's tried out. That's no reflection on him, either. I remember once I went through seeing my best friend murdered; being shot at a dozen times myself as I climbed a cliff; seeing a pirate ship destroyed with all on board, apparently by the hand of Providence; escaping from a big volcanic bust-up into a cave, and having the cave entrance drop down shut behind me. I was as cool as a cucumber all through it. I remember congratulating myself that, anyhow, I was going to die game."

"By Jove!" murmured Jack Warford, staring at him, fascinated. Evidently, the super-beautiful garment had been forgotten.

"Then a war-ship's crew rescued me; and I broke down completely, and acted like a silly ass. I wasn't game at all; I'd just managed to postpone finding it out for a while."

"It was just the reaction!" cried Jack.

"Well, if that sort of reaction happens along before the trouble is all over, it looks uncommonly like loss of nerve," Percy Darrow pointed out. "No man knows whether or not he's game," he repeated. "However," he smiled whimsically, "I imagine you're likely to postpone your reactions as well as the next."

"What's up? What do you want me to do?"

"Stick by me; obey orders," said Darrow.

"What's up?"

"Did you notice anything in the papers this morning?"

"They're full of this electrical failure last night. Haven't you seen them?"

"Not yet. While I dress, tell me what they say."

"The worst was in the tubes—" Warford began, but Darrow interrupted him.

"I could tell you exactly what must have happened," said he, "if the failure was complete. Never mind that. Was the condition general, or only local? How far did it extend?"

"It seemed to be confined to New York, and only about to Highbridge."

"Long Island? Jersey?"

"Yes; it hit them, too."

"What are the theories?"

"I couldn't see that they had any—that I could understand," said Jack.
"There's some talk of the influence of a comet."

"Rubbish! Who sprung that?"

"Professor Aitken, I think."

"He ought to know better. Any others?"

"I couldn't understand them all. There was one of polarizing the island because of the steel structures; and the—"

"No human agency?"

"What?"

"No man or men are suspected of bringing this about?"

"Oh, no! You don't think—"

"No, I don't think. I only imagine; and I haven't much basis for imagining. But if my imaginations come out right, we'll have plenty to do."

"Where, now?" asked Jack, as the scientist finished dressing and reached for his hat. "Breakfast?"

"No, I ate that before I dressed. We'll make a call on the Atlas
Building."

"All right," agreed Jack cheerfully. "What for?"

"To ask McCarthy if he hasn't a job for you in construction."

Jack came to a dead halt.

"Say!" he cried. "Look here! You don't quite get the humor of that. Why, McCarthy loves the name of Warford about the way a yellow dog loves a tin can to his tail."

"We'll call on him, just the same," insisted Darrow.

"I'm game," said Jack, "but I can tell you the answer right now. No need to walk to the Atlas Building."

"I have a notion the Atlas Building is going to be a mighty interesting place," said Darrow.

They debouched on the street. The air was soft and golden; the sun warm with the Indian summer. The clock on the Metropolitan tower was booming nine. As the two set out at a slow saunter down the backwater of the side street, Darrow explained a little further.

"Jack," said he abruptly, "I'll tell you what I think—or imagine. I believe last night's phenomena were controlled, not fortuitous or the result of natural forces. In other words, some man turned off the juice in this city; and turned it on again. How he did it, I do not know; but he did it very completely. It was not a question of wiring alone. Even dry-cell batteries were affected. Now, I can think of only one broad general principle by which he could accomplish that result. Just what means he took to apply the principle is beyond my knowledge. But if I am correct in my supposition, there occurs to me no reason why he should not go a step or so farther."

"I don't believe I follow," said Jack contritely.

"What I'm driving at is this," said Darrow; "this is not the end of the circus by any means. We're going to see a lot of funny things—if my guess is anywhere near right."

CHAPTER VI

THE WRATH TO COME

"Did you ever meet McCarthy?" asked Darrow, as the elevator of the Atlas sprang upward.

"Never."

"Well, no matter what he says or does, I want you to say nothing—nothing."

"Correct," said Jack. "I'll down-charge."

"That's right," Darrow approved. "First of all, wait outside until I call you."

McCarthy was already at his desk, and in evil humor. When Darrow entered, he merely looked up and growled.

"Good morning," Darrow greeted him easily. "Any wireless this morning?"

McCarthy threw back his heavy head.

"That damn operator's been leaking!" he cried.

"So there are 'wireless'," observed Darrow. "No, your operator didn't leak. Who is he?"

"If he didn't leak, what did you say that for?"

"I'm a good guesser," replied Darrow enigmatically. "They say anything about a 'sign' being sent, and such talk?"

"You've been gettin' the dope yourself out of the air," returned McCarthy sullenly.

"Look here, my fat friend," drawled Darrow, his eyes half closing, "I'm getting nothing from anywhere except in my own gray matter. What do your messages have to say?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Because I'm interested—and because I know who sent 'em."

"So do I," snarled McCarthy, in a gust of temper.