“Now what the hell?”
And as the great train slid to a stop, the current in the third rail was shut off and the low whine that always came from the powerful motors of the locomotive was suddenly silenced. Turning now across his instruments to another man, the engineer spoke quietly:
“I wonder what the hell has happened,” he said.
For a long time the Limited stood a silent and powerless thing of steel, while a short distance away the water flooded down and flowed between the tracks there like a river. And five hundred men and women who had been caught up from their lives and swiftly borne from cities, towns, and little hamlets all across the continent were imprisoned in the rock, weary, impatient, frustrated—only five minutes away from the great station that was the end and goal of their combined desire. And in the station itself other hundreds waited for them—and went on waiting—restless, wondering, anxious, knowing nothing about the why of it.
Meanwhile, on the seventh landing of the service stairs in the evacuated building, firemen had been working feverishly with axes. The place was dense with smoke. The sweating men wore masks, and the only, light they had was that provided by their torchlights.
They had battered open the doorway of the elevator shaft, and one of them had lowered himself down on to the roof of the imprisoned car half a floor below and was now cutting into the roof with his sharp axe.
“Have you got it, Ed?”
“Yeah—just about…I’m almost through…This next one does it, I think.”
The axe smashed down again. There was a splintering crash. And then:
“O.K…Wait a minute…Hand me down the flashlight, Tom.”
“See anything?”
In a moment, quietly:
“Yeah…I’m going in…Jim, you better come down, too. I’ll need you.”
There was a brief silence, then the man’s quiet voice again:
“O.K…I’ve got it…Here, Jim, reach down and get underneath the arms…Got it?...O.K…Tom, you better reach down and help Jim…Good.”
Together they lifted it from its imprisoned trap, looked at it for a moment in the flare of their flashlights, and laid it down, not ungently, on the floor—something old and tired and dead and very pitiful.
Mrs. Jack went to the window of the drug-store and peered out at the great building across the street.
“I wonder if anything’s happening over there,” she said to her friends with a puzzled look on her face. “Do you suppose it’s over? Have they got it out?”
The dark immensity of those towering walls told nothing, but there were signs that the fire was almost out. There were fewer lines of hose in the street, and one could see firemen pulling them in and putting them back in the trucks. Other firemen were coming from the building, bringing their tools and stowing them away. All the great engines were still throbbing powerfully, but the lines that had connected them with the hydrants were uncoupled, and the water they were pumping now came from somewhere else and was rushing in torrents down all the gutters. The police still held the crowd back and would not yet permit the tenants to return to their apartments.
The newspapermen, who had early arrived upon the scene, were now beginning to come into the drug-store to telephone their stories to the papers. They were a motley crew, a little shabby and threadbare, with battered hats in which their Press cards had been stuck, and some of them had the red noses which told of long hours spent in speak-easies.
One would have known that they were newspapermen even without their Press cards. The signs were unmistakable. There was something jaded in the eye, something a little worn and tarnished about the whole man, something that got into his face, his tone, the way he walked, the way he smoked a cigarette, even into the hang of his trousers, and especially into his battered hat, which revealed instantly that these were gentlemen of the Press.