When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see.
He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights.
"Yesterday, they would not have served me," he whispered, as he forced the food down.
Then he started up the street,--looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent, silent all. Was nobody--nobody--he dared not think the thought and hurried on.
Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have forgotten? He must rush to the subway--then he almost laughed. No--a car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at 42nd Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past the Plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past 72nd Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God.
"Hello--hello--help, in God's name!" wailed the woman. "There's a dead girl in here and a man and--and see yonder dead men lying in the street and dead horses--for the love of God go and bring the officers----" And the words trailed off into hysterical tears.
He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was a woman of perhaps twenty-five--rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with darkly-golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness, she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. His face was soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long banked, but not out.
So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other.
"What has happened?" she cried. "Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence! I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of God,--and see----" She dragged him through great, silken hangings to where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay prone in his livery.
The tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors racing through her body.
"I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet which I took last night; when I came out--I saw the dead!
"What has happened?" she cried again.
He answered slowly:
"Something--comet or devil--swept across the earth this morning and--many are dead!"
"Many? Very many?"
"I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you."
She gasped and they stared at each other.
"My--father!" she whispered.
"Where is he?"
"He started for the office."
"Where is it?"
"In the Metropolitan Tower."
"Leave a note for him here and come."
Then he stopped.
"No," he said firmly--"first, we must go--to Harlem."
"Harlem!" she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely down the steps.
"There's a swifter car in the garage in the court," she said.
"I don't know how to drive it," he said.
"I do," she answered.
In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz rose and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th Street on two wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th.
He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray. She did not look, but said:
"You have lost--somebody?"
"I have lost--everybody," he said, simply--"unless----"
He ran back and was gone several minutes--hours they seemed to her.
"Everybody," he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket.
"I'm afraid I was selfish," he said. But already the car was moving toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem--the brown, still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the silence--the wild and haunting silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square Metropolitan Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk. The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and addressed but unsent:
Dear Daughter:
I've gone for a hundred mile spin in Fred's new Mercedes. Shall not be back before dinner. I'll bring Fred with me.
J.B.H.
"Come," she cried nervously. "We must search the city."
Up and down, over and across, back again--on went that ghostly search. Everywhere was silence and death--death and silence! They hunted from Madison Square to Spuyten Duyvel; they rushed across the Williamsburg Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn; from the Battery and Morningside Heights they scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere, and no human sign. Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He sniffed the air. An odor--a smell--and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled back helplessly in her seat.
"What can we do?" she cried.
It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly.
"The long distance telephone--the telegraph and the cable--night rockets and then--flight!"
She looked at him now with strength and confidence. He did not look like men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was content. In fifteen minutes they were at the central telephone exchange. As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens--the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility. She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It looked--she beat back the thought--but it looked,--it persisted in looking like--she turned her head and found herself alone. One moment she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath.
"Hello!" she called in low tones. She was calling to the world. The world _must_ answer. Would the world _answer_? Was the world----
Silence!
She had spoken too low.
"Hello!" she cried, full-voiced.
She listened. Silence! Her heart beat quickly. She cried in clear, distinct, loud tones: "Hello--hello--hello!"
What was that whirring? Surely--no--was it the click of a receiver?
She bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called, until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. It was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was silence. Her voice dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly staring into the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay dead within her. Yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the world--she could not frame the thought or say the word. It was too mighty--too terrible! She turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart. For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,--with a man alien in blood and culture--unknown, perhaps unknowable. It was awful! She must escape--she must fly; he must not see her again. Who knew what awful thoughts--