The gathering at the Hawkins' home that night was, I suppose, in the nature of a house-warming.
The Blossoms, the Ridgeways, the Eldridges, the Gordons were there, in addition to perhaps a dozen and a half other people whom I had never met. Also, Mr. Blodgett was there.
Old Mr. Blodgett is Hawkins' father-in-law. There is a Mrs. Blodgett, too, but she is really too sweet an old lady to be placed in the mother-in-law category.
Blodgett, however, makes up for any deficiencies on his wife's part in the traditional traits. He seems to have analyzed Hawkins with expert care and precision—to have appraised and classified his character and attainments to a nicety.
Consequently, Hawkins and Mr. Blodgett are rarely to be observed wandering hither and thither with their arms about each other's waists.
Finally, I was there myself with my wife.
It seems almost superfluous to mention my presence. Whenever Hawkins is on the verge of trouble with one of his contrivances, some esoteric force seems to sweep me along in his direction with resistless energy.
Sometimes I wonder what Hawkins did for a victim before we met—but let that be.
Dinner had been lively, for the guests were mainly young, and the wines such as Hawkins can afford; but when we had assembled in the drawing-room, conversation seemed to slow down somewhat, and to pass over to a languid discussion of the house as a sort of relaxation.
Then it was that a pert miss from one of the Oranges remarked:
“Yes, the frescoing is lovely—almost all of it. But—whoever could have designed that frieze, Mr. Hawkins?”
“Er—that frieze?” repeated the inventor, a little uncomfortably, indicating the insane-looking strip of painting a foot or so wide which ran along under the ceiling.
“Yes, it's so funny. Nothing but dots and dots and dots. Whoever could have conceived such an idea?”
“Well, I did, Miss Mather,” Hawkins replied. “I designed that myself.”
“Oh, did you?” murmured the inquisitive one, going red.
Hawkins turned to me, and the girl subsided; but old Mr. Blodgett had overheard. He felt constrained to put in, with his usual tactful thought and grating, nasal voice:
“It's hideous—simply hideous. I don't see—I can't see the sense in spending that amount of money in plastering painted roses and undressed young ones all over the ceiling, Herbert.”
“No?” said Hawkins between his teeth.
“Folly—pure folly,” grunted the old gentleman. “No reason for it—no reason under the sun.”
Hawkins at least reserves family dissensions for family occasions. He held his peace and his tongue.
“Yes, sir,” persisted Blodgett, “everything else out of the question, the house might catch fire to-night, and your entire stock of painted babies go up in smoke. Then where'd they be? Eh?”
“See here,” said Hawkins, goaded into speech, “you just keep your mind easy on that score at least, will you, papa, dear?”
“What's that? What's that?”
“This house isn't going up in smoke,” went on the inventor tartly. “You can take my word for it.”
“Isn't, eh?” jeered the elderly Blodgett with his nasty sneering little chuckle. “And how do you know it's not? Eh? Smarter men than you, my boy, and in better built houses have——”
“Look here! This particular place isn't going to burn, because——” Hawkins rapped out.
“What isn't going to burn, Herbert?” inquired Mrs. Hawkins, with a cold, warning glance at her husband as she perceived that hostilities were in progress. “Is he teasing you again, papa?”
“Teasing me!” sniffed Blodgett with an unpleasant leer at Hawkins.
“Teasing that antiquity!” Hawkins growled in my ear. “Say, isn't that enough to——”
“Don't whisper, Herbert—it isn't polite,” continued Mrs. Hawkins, the playfulness of her manner somewhat belied by the glitter in her eye. “Let us all into the secret.”
“Oh, there's no secret,” said the inventor shortly.
“No dance, either,” pouted the girl from Jersey, who was an intimate of the family.
It was the signal for the light fantastic business to begin. Hawkins is notoriously out of sympathy with dancing. He took my arm and guided me stealthily from the drawing-room.
“Phew!” remarked the inventor when we had settled ourselves up-stairs with a couple of cigars. “Say, Griggs, do you still wonder at crime?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning dear papa Blodgett,” snapped Hawkins. “Honestly, do you believe it would be really wicked to lure that old human pussy-cat down cellar and sort of lose him through the furnace-door?”
“Don't talk nonsense, Hawkins,” I laughed.
“It isn't nonsense. It's the way I feel. But I'll get square on that spiteful tongue of his some day—and when I do! There isn't anything sweeter waiting for me in Heaven than to feel myself emptying a pan of dishwater on that old reprobate from one of the upper windows.
“Why, Griggs, sometimes in the night I dream I have him on the floor, that I'm just getting even for some of the things he's said to me and about me, and I wake up in a dripping perspiration and——”
“Stop, Hawkins!” I guffawed.
“Strikes you funny, too, does it?” the inventor cried angrily. “I suppose you think it's all right for him to talk as he does? Criticise my decorations, tell me they'll all burn up some day, and all that?”
“Well, but they might.”
“They might not!” shouted Hawkins in a fury. “You don't know any more about it than he does. You couldn't burn up this house if you soaked every carpet in it with oil!”
“Why not?”
“Aha! Why not? That's just the point. Why not, to be sure? Because it's all prepared for ahead of time.”
“Private wire to the engine-house?” I queried.
“Private wire to Halifax! There's no private wire about it. See here, Griggs, do you suppose that poor little brain of yours could comprehend a truly great idea?”
“It could try,” I said meekly.
“Then listen. You remember those dots on the frieze all through the house? You do? All right. Just close your eyes and conceive a little metal tube running back into the wall. Imagine the little tube opening into a large supply pipe in the wall.
“Is that clear? Then conceive that the supply pipe in each room connects with a supply pipe in the rear of the house, and that the big pipe terminates—or rather begins—in a big tank on the top floor!”
“But what on earth is it all?”
“It's the Hawkins Chemico-Sprinkler System!” announced the inventor.
“For the Lord's sake!” I gasped.
“Yes, sir! It's something like the sprinkling system you see in factories, but all concealed—perfectly adapted to private house purposes! Every one of those dots is simply a little hole in the wall through which, in case of fire, will flow quart after quart of my chemical fire-extinguisher? How's that?”
“Er—is the tank full?” I asked, gliding hurriedly away from the wall.
“Of course it is. Oh, sit where you were, Griggs, don't drag in that asinine clownishness of yours. Or, better still, come up with me and see the business end of the thing—the tank and all that.”
“The stuff isn't inflammable, is it? We're smoking, you know.”
“An inflammable fire-extinguishing liquid!” cried Hawkins. “Why, can't you understand that—bah!”
He laid a course to the upper regions and I followed.
“Out here in the extension,” he explained, when we reached the top floor. “There!”
We stood in a bare room, whose emptiness was accentuated by the cold, electric light.
Furnishings it had none, save for the big tank in the center. This was a wooden affair, lined with lead.
Over the top, and some two feet above the tank proper, the heavy cover was suspended by a weird system of pulleys and electric wires. To the under side of the cover was fastened a big glass sphere filled with white stuff.
It was a remarkable contrivance.
“There—that's simple, isn't it?” said Hawkins, with a happy smile.
“It may be if you understand it.”
“Why, just look here. See that big glass ball? That's full of marble dust—carbonate of lime, you know. The tank is filled with weak sulphuric acid. When the ball drops into the acid—what happens?”
“You have a nasty job fishing it out again?”
“Not at all. It smashes into flinders, the marble dust combines with the sulphuric acid, and forms a neutral liquid, bubbling with carbonic acid. Even you, Griggs, must know that carbonic acid gas will put out any fire, without damaging anything. There you are.”
“I see. You smell fire, rush up here and knock that ball into the tank, and the house is flooded through the dots in your frieze. Remarkable!”
“Oh, I don't even have to come up here,” smiled Hawkins. “See that?”
“That” was a little strand of platinum wire in a niche in the wall.
“That's just a test fuse, so that I can see that she's all in working order,” pursued the inventor, leaning his cigar against it. “There's half a dozen of them in every room in the house. As soon as the heat touches them, they melt and set off my electric release—and down drops the cover of the tank—ball and all. The ball breaks, the valve at the bottom opens automatically—and down goes the tank, full of extinguisher.”
“Well, I must say it looks practical.”
“It is!” asserted Hawkins. “Some night—if the night ever comes—when you see a roaring blaze in one of these rooms subdued in ten seconds by the gentle drizzle that comes out of that frieze, you will——”
“Mr. Hawkins, sir,” interrupted Hawkins' butler at the door.
“Well, William?”
“Mrs. Hawkins, sir, she says as how your presence is desired down-stairs.”
“Oh, all right,” said the inventor wearily. “I'll be down directly.”
“No rest for the wicked,” he commented to me. “Come on, Griggs, we'll have to dance.”
The festivity was in full swing when we descended.
Mrs. Hawkins came over to us and remarked in low tones to her spouse:
“Now just try to make yourself agreeable, Herbert. It's not nice for you to steal away and smoke.”
“I'm not smoking.”
“Mr. Griggs is.”
“So I am,” I said, suddenly realizing the fact. “William, will you dispose of this, please?”
“Now go right in, both of you,” Mrs. Hawkins began. Then she was called away.
“Griggs!” muttered Hawkins, thoughtfully tapping his forehead.
“Yes?”
“What—what the deuce did I do with my cigar?”
“I'm sure I don't know.”
“But I had it up-stairs. We were both smoking.”
“So you did,” I said. “The last I saw of it you leaned it against that fuse thing——”
“Great Scott! That's what I did!” gasped the inventor, turning white.
“Well, what of it?”
“Why, suppose the infernal thing has burned down to the fuse!” cried Hawkins hoarsely. “Suppose it melts through the wire and sends down that top!”
“Will it start the stuff running?”
“Start it! Of course it'll start it. Gee whizz! I'm going up there now, Griggs!”
Hawkins made for the stairs. I smiled after him, for he seemed rather worked up.
I turned back to the dancers. It was a pretty scene. To the rhythm of a particularly seductive waltz, the guests were gliding about the floor. I noted the gay colors of the ladies' gowns, the flowers, the sparkling diamonds.
And then—then I noted the frieze!
My eyes seemed instinctively to travel to that stretch of ugliness—they fastened upon the dots with a kind of fascination. And none too soon.
From one of the dots spurted forth what looked like a tiny stream of water. Another followed and another and yet another. The whole multitude of dots were raining liquid upon the dancers from all sides of the room!
The streams came from north, east, south, and west. They came from the hallway behind me—a hundred of them seemed to converge upon my devoted back. I was fairly soaked through in a second.
The panic can hardly be fancied. Men and women shrieked together in the utter amazement of the thing. They laughed aloud, some of them. Others cried out in terror.
They leaped and sprang back and forth, to this side and that, in the vain endeavor to dodge the innumerable streams. Some slipped and almost fell, carrying down others with them. And all were doused.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the flood ceased.
“Well, God bless my soul!” ejaculated Mr. Blodgett, putting up a hand to wring his collar. “What in Heaven's name happened?”
“Great Caesar's ghost!” said Hawkins' voice behind me.
He had returned from his trip to the top floor extension.
“It's all right,” he called with cheery indifference to the contrary sentiments of two dozen people. “There's no danger. It won't hurt you.”
“But it does. It bites!” cried the girl from Jersey. “What is it? Where did it come from?”
“Yes, it does bite! It smarts awfully! By Jove! The stuff's eating me! What is it, Hawkins? Oh, Mr. Hawkins, wherever did it come from? Why, it ran out of those dots—I saw it! What is it?” echoed from different parts of the room.
“It's only my sprinkler—my fire-extinguisher,” Hawkins explained. “It went off by accident, you see. There's nothing in it to hurt you. It's perfectly neutral. It can't bite—that's imagination.”
“But it does!” cried Mrs. Gordon. “It stings like acid. It actually seems to be eating my skin!”
“Bite! I should say it did!” growled Mr. Blodgett. “It's chewing my hands off—I believe it's carbolic acid. I do—I'll swear I do. No smell—but it's been deodorized. That's it—carbolic acid!”
“Carbolic fiddlesticks!” said Hawkins.
Then a puzzled expression came into his eyes. He raised one of his wet hands and tasted it—and spat violently.
“Say! Hold on! Wait a minute!” he cried.
Hawkins darted off up-stairs. I could hear him bounding along, two steps at a time, until he reached the top.
Silence ensued for a few seconds, save for an exclamation here and there, as one or another of the guests discovered that his or her neck or ear or arm was smarting.
Then the servants piled up from below. They, too, were wet and frightened. They, too, had discovered that the liquid emitted by the Hawkins Chemico-Sprinkler System bit into the human epidermis like fire.
“Phat is it? Phat is it?” the cook was drearily intoning, when hurrying footsteps turned my attention once more to the stairs.
Hawkins was coming down at a gallop. In his arms he carried a keg, which dribbled white powder over the beautiful carpet.
“Say,” he shouted to me. “That ball didn't bust!”
“It didn't?” I cried.
“No! There's no marble dust in the stuff!” said the inventor, landing on the floor with a final jump and tearing into the parlor. “It's pure, diluted sulphuric acid!”
“Acid!” shrieked a dozen ladies.
“Yes!” groaned Hawkins, depositing his keg on the floor. “But we'll get the best of it. William, bring up a wash-tub full of water! Mary, go get all the washrags in the house! Quick!”
The homely household articles arrived within a minute or two.
“Now,” continued Hawkins, dumping half the keg into the tub. “That's baking soda. It'll neutralize the acid. Here, everybody. Dip a rag in here and wash off the acid.
“Oh, hang propriety and decency and conventionality and all the rest of it!” he vociferated as some of the ladies, quite warrantably hung back. “Get at the acid before it gets at you! Don't you—can't you understand? It'll burn into your skin in a little while! Come on!”
There was no hesitation after that. Men and women alike made frantically for the tub, dipped cloths in the liquid, and laved industriously hands and arms and cheeks that were already sore and burning.
Picture the scene: a dozen women in evening dress, a dozen men in “swallow-tails,” clustered around a wash-tub there in Hawkins' parlor, working for dear life with the soaking cloths.
{Illustration: “It was just the sort of thing that could happen under Hawkins' roof, and nowhere else."}
Ludicrous, impossible, it was just the sort of thing that could happen under Hawkins' roof and nowhere else—barring perhaps a retreat for the insane.
Later the excitement subsided. The ladies, disheveled as to hair, carrying costumes whose glory had departed forever, retired to the chambers above for such further repairs as might be possible. The men, too, under William's guidance, went to draw upon Hawkins' wardrobe for clothes in which to return home.
The inventor, Mr. Blodgett, and myself were left together in the drawing-room.
That amiable old gentleman's coat—he is bitterly averse to undue expenditure for clothes—had turned to a pale, rotting green.
“Well, it's a good thing that was diluted acid instead of strong, isn't it, Griggs?” remarked Hawkins. “Originally I had intended using the strong acid, you know, for the reason——”
“Aaaah!” cried Mr. Blodgett. “So that was more of your imbecile inventing, was it? Fire-extinguisher! Bah! I thought nobody but you could have conceived the idea like that! What under the sun did you let off your infernal contrivance for?”
“Oh, I just did it to spite you, papa,” said Hawkins, with weary sarcasm.
“By George, sir, I believe you did!” snapped the old gentleman. “It's like you! Look at my coat, sir! Look at——”
I was edging away when Mrs. Hawkins entered. She was clad in somber black now, and her cheeks flamed scarlet with mortification.
“Well!” she exclaimed.
“Well, my dear?” said Hawkins, bracing himself.
“A pretty mess you've made of our house-warming, haven't you? You and your idiotic fire-extinguisher!”
“Madam, my Chemico-Sprinkler System is one——”
“And not only the evening spoiled, and half our friends so enraged at you that they'll never enter the house again, but do you know what you'll have to pay for? Miss Mather's dress alone, I happen to know, cost two hundred dollars! And Mrs. Gordon's gown came from Paris last week—four hundred and fifty! And I was with Nellie Ridgeway the day she bought that white satin dress she had on. It cost——”
“Glad of it!” interposed Blodgett, with a fiendish chuckle. “Serves him jolly well right! If you'd listened to me fifteen years ago, Edith, when I told you not to marry that fool——”
“Griggs! W-w-w-where are you going?” Hawkins called weakly.
“Home!” I said decidedly, making for the hall. “I think my wife's ready. And I'm afraid my hair's loosening up, too, where your fire-extinguisher wet it. Good-night!”
“It's a good while since you've invented anything, isn't it, Hawkins?” I had said the night before.
“Um-um,” Hawkins had murmured.
“Must be two months?”
“Ah?” Hawkins had smiled.
“What is it? Life insurance companies on to you?”
“Um-ah,” Hawkins had replied.
“Or have you really given it up for good? It can't be, can it?”
“Oh-ho,” Hawkins had yawned, and there I stopped questioning him.
Satan himself must have concocted the business which sent me—or started me—toward Philadelphia next morning. Perhaps, though, the railroad company was as much to blame; they should have known better.
The man in the moon was no further from my thoughts than Hawkins as I stepped ashore on the Jersey side of the ferry to take the train. Yet there stood Hawkins in the station.
He seemed to be fussing violently as he lingered by the door of one of the offices. Unperceived, I came close enough to hear him murmur thrice in succession something about “blamed nonsense—devilish red-tape.”
Surely something had worked him up. I wondered what it was.
As I watched, an apologetic-looking youth appeared in the door of the office and handed Hawkins an official-appearing slip of paper.
The inventor snatched it impolitely and turned his back, while the youth gazed after him for a moment and then returned to the office.
“Set of confounded idiots!” Hawkins remarked wrathfully.
Then, ere I could disappear, he spied me.
“Aha, Griggs, you here?”
“No, I'm not,” I said flatly. “If there's any trouble brewing, Hawkins, consider me back in New York. What has excited you?”
“Excited me? Those fool railroad officials are enough to drive a man to the asylum. Did you see how they kept me standing outside that door?”
“Well, did you want to stand inside the door, Hawkins?”
“I didn't want to stand anywhere in the neighborhood of their infernal door! The idea of making me get a permit to ride on an engine! Me!”
“I don't know how else you'd manage it, Hawkins, unless you applied for a job as fireman. Why on earth do you want to ride on a locomotive?”
“Oh, it's not a locomotive, Griggs. You don't understand. Where are you bound for?”
“Philadelphia.”
“Ten:ten?” Hawkins cried eagerly.
“Ten:ten,” I said.
“Then, by George, you'll be with us! You'll see the whole show!”
Hawkins caught my coat-sleeve and dragged me toward the train-gates.
“See, here,” I said, detaining him, “what whole show?”
“The—oh, come and see it before we start.”
“No, sir!” I said firmly. “Not until I know what it is. Are you going to play any monkey-shines with the locomotive, Hawkins? What is it?”
“But why don't you come and see for yourself?” the inventor cried impatiently. “It's—it's——”
He paused for a moment.
“Why, it's the Hawkins Alcomotive!” he added.
“And what under heavens is the Hawkins——”
“Well, you don't suppose I'm carrying scale drawings of the thing on me, do you? You don't suppose that I'm prepared to give a demonstration with magic lantern pictures on the spot? If you want to see it, come and see it. If not, you'd better get into your train. It's ten:three now.”
I knew no way of better utilizing the remaining seven minutes. I walked or rather trotted—after Hawkins, through the gates, down the platform, and along by the train until we reached the locomotive—or the place where a decent, God-fearing locomotive should have been standing.
The customary huge iron horse was not in sight.
In its place stood what resembled a small flat-car. On the car I observed an affair which resembled something an enthusiastic automobilist might have conceived in a lobster salad nightmare.
It was, I presume, merely an abnormally large automobile engine; and along each side of it ran a big cylindrical tank.
“There, Griggs!” said Hawkins. “That doesn't look much like the old-fashioned, clumsy locomotive, does it?”
“I should say it didn't.”
“Of course it's a little rough in finish—just a trial Alcomotive, you know—but it's going to do one thing to-day.”
“And that is?”
“It's going to sound the solemn death-knell of the old steam locomotive,” said Hawkins, evidently feeling some compassion for the time-honored engine.
“But will that thing pull a train? Is that the notion?”
“Notion! It's no notion—it's a simple, mathematical certainty, my dear Griggs. In that Alcomotive—it's run by vapors of alcohol, you know—we have sufficient power to pull fifteen parlor cars, twelve loaded day-coaches, twenty ordinary flat-cars, eighteen box-cars, or twenty-seven——”
“'Board for Newark, Elizabeth, Trenton, Philadelphia, and all points south,” sang out the man at the gates.
He was lying, but he didn't know it.
“Well, I guess it's—it's time to start,” Hawkins concluded rather nervously.
“Well, may the Lord have mercy on your soul, Hawkins,” I said feelingly. “Good-by. I'll be along on the next train—whenever that is.”
“What! You're coming on the Alcomotive with me!”
“Not on your life, Hawkins!” I cried energetically. “If this railroad wishes to trust its passengers and rolling-stock and road-bed to your alcohol machine, that's their business. But they've got a hanged sight more confidence in you than I have.”
“Well, you'll have confidence enough before the day's over,” said the inventor, grabbing me with some determination. “For once, I'll get the best of your sneers. You come along!”
“Let go!” I shouted.
“Here,” said Hawkins to the mechanic who was warily eying the Alcomotive, “help Mr. Griggs up.”
Hawkins boosted and the man grabbed me. In a second or two I stood on the car, and Hawkins clambered up beside me.
Had I but regained my breath a second or two sooner—had I but collected my senses sufficiently to jump!
But I was a little too bewildered by the suddenness of my elevation to act for the moment. As I stood there, gasping, I heard Hawkins say:
“What's that conductor waving his hands for?”
“He—he wants you to start up,” tittered the engineer. “We are two minutes late as it is.”
“Oh, that's it?” said Hawkins gruffly. “He needn't get so excited about it. Why, positively, that man looks as if he was swearing! If I——”
“Well, say, you better start up,” put in the engineer. “I may get blamed for this.”
Hawkins opened a valve—he turned a crank—he pulled back a lever or two.
The Alcomotive suddenly left the station. So, abruptly, in fact, did the train start that my last vision of the end brakeman revealed him rolling along the platform in a highly undignified fashion, while the engineer sat at my feet in amazement as I clutched the side of the car.
“Well, I guess we started enough to suit him!” observed Hawkins grimly, as we whizzed past towers and banged over switches in our exit from the yard.
We certainly were started. Whatever subsequent disadvantages may have developed in the Alcomotive, it possessed speed.
In less time than it takes to tell it, we were whirling over the marshes, swaying from side to side, tearing a long hole in the atmosphere, I fancy; and certainly almost jarring the teeth from my head.
“How's this for time?” cried the inventor.
“It's all right for t-t-t-time,” I stuttered. “But——”
“Yes, that part's all right,” yelled the engineer, who had been ruthlessly detailed to assist. “But say, mister, how about the time-table?”
“What about it?” demanded Hawkins.
“Why, the other trains ain't arranged to give with this ninety-mile-an-hour gait.”
“They should be. I told the railroad people that I intended to break a few records.”
“But I guess they didn't know—we may smash into something, mister, and——”
“Not my fault,” said the inventor. “If we do by any chance have a collision, the railroad people are to blame. But we won't. I can stop this machine and the whole train in two hundred feet. That's another great point about the Alcomotive, Griggs—the Alcobrakes. You see, when I shut off the engine proper, all the power goes into the brakes. It is thus——”
“Hey, mister,” the engineer shouted again, “here's Newark!”
“Why, so it is!” murmured Hawkins, with a pleased smile. “Really, I had no notion that we'd be here so soon.”
I will say it for Hawkins that he managed to stop the affair at Newark in very commendable fashion. It seems so remarkable that one of his contrivances should have exhibited that much amenity to control that it is worthy of note.
Some of the passengers who alighted to be sure, exhibited signs of hard usage. There were visible bruises in several cases, due, presumably, to the slightly startling suddenness with which our trip began.
But Hawkins was blind to anything of that sort.
“Now, wasn't that fine?” he said proudly.
“Well—we're here—and alive,” was about all I could say.
“I wonder how it feels to be back in the cars. Let's try it,” proposed Hawkins.
“But say, mister,” said the engineer, “who's going to run the darned machine, if you're not here?”
“Why, you, my man. You understand an engine of this sort, don't you? But of course you do. Here! This is the valve for the alcohol—this is the igniter—here are the brakes—this is the speed control. See? Oh, you won't find any difficulty in managing it. The Alcomotive is simplicity on wheels.”
“Yes, but I've got a wife and family——” the unhappy man began.
“Well,” said Hawkins, icily.
“And if the thing should balk——”
“Balk! Rats! Come, Griggs. It's time you started, my man. I'll wave my hand when we reach the car.”
Frankly, I think that it was a downright contemptible trick to play on the defenceless engineer. Had I been able to render him any assistance, I should have stayed with him.
But Hawkins was already trotting back to the cars, and, with a murmured benediction for the hapless mechanic who stood and trembled alone on the platform of the Alcomotive, I followed.
We took seats in one of the cars.
“Well, why doesn't he start?” muttered the inventor.
“Maybe the fright has killed him,” I suggested. “It's enough——”
Bang!
The Alcomotive had sprung into action once more. People slid out of their seats with the shock, others toppled head over heels into the aisle, the porter went down unceremoniously upon his sable countenance and crushed into pulp the plate of tongue sandwich he had been carrying.
But the Alcomotive was going—that was enough for Hawkins. He sat back and watched the scenery slide by kinetoscope fashion.
“Lord, Lord, where's the old locomotive now?” he laughed pityingly.
“Don't shout till you're out of the wood, Hawkins,” I cautioned him. “We haven't reached Philadelphia yet.”
“But can't you see that we're going to? Won't that poor little mind of yours grapple with the fact that the Hawkins Alcomotive is a success—asuccess?Can't you feel the train shooting along——”
“I can feel that well enough,” I said dubiously; “but suppose——”
“Suppose nothing! What have you to croak about now, Griggs? Actually, there are times when you really make me physically weary. See here! The Alcomotive supersedes the locomotive first, in point of weight; second, in point of speed; third, in economy of operation; fourth, it is absolutely safe and easy to manage.
“No complicated machinery—nothing to slip and smash at critical moments—perfect ease of control. Why, if that fellow really wished to stop—here, now, at this minute——”
Whether the fellow wished it or not, he stopped—there, then, at that minute!
We stopped with such an almighty thud that it seemed as if the cars must fly into splinters. They rattled and shook and cracked. The passengers executed further acrobatic feats upon the floor; they clutched at things and fell over things and swore and gurgled.
“Well, by thunder!” ejaculated Hawkins. That was about the mildest remark I heard at the time. “What do you suppose he did?”
“Give it up,” I said, caressing the egg-like eminence that had appeared upon my brow as if by magic. “Probably he fell into the infernal thing, and it has stopped to show him up.”
“Nonsense! We'll have to see what's happened. Come, we'll go through the cars. It's quicker.”
We ran through the coaches until we had reached the front of the train. Hawkins went out upon the platform.
The Alcomotive was apparently intact. The engineer stood over the machinery, white as chalk, and his lips mumbled incoherently.
“What is it?” cried Hawkins.
“How'n blazes do I know?” demanded the engineer.
“But didn't you stop her?”
“Certainly not. She—she stopped herself.”
“What perfect idiocy!” cried the inventor “You must have done something!”
“I did not!” retorted the engineer. “The blamed thing just stood stock-still and near bumped the life out of me! Say, mister, you come up here and see what——”
“Oh, it's nothing serious, my man. Now, let me think. What could have happened? Er—just try that lever at your right hand.”
“This one?”
“Yes; pull it gently.”
“Hadn't we better git them people out o' the train first?” asked the engineer. “You know, if anything happens, people just love to sue a railroad company for damages, and——”
“Pull that lever!” Hawkins cried angrily.
The man took a good grip, murmured something which sounded like a prayer, and pulled.
Nothing happened.
“Well, that's queer!” muttered Hawkins. “Doesn't it seem to have any effect?”
“Nope.”
“Well, then, try that small one at your left. Pull it back half way.”
The man obeyed.
For a second or two the Alcomotive emitted a string of consumptive coughs. One or two parts moved spasmodically and seemed to be reaching for the engineer. The man dodged.
Then the Alcomotive began to back!
“Here! Here! Something's wrong!” cried Hawkins, as the accursed thing gathered speed. “Push that back where it was.”
“Nit!” yelled the engineer, picking up his coat and running to the side of the car. “I ain't going to make my wife a widow for no darned invention or no darned job! See?”
“You're not going to jump?” squealed the inventor.
“You bet I am!” replied the mechanic, making a flying leap.
He was gone.
The Alcomotive was now without any semblance of a controlling hand.
There was no way for Hawkins to reach the contrivance, for the car was four or five feet distant from the train proper, and to attempt a leap or a climb to the Alcomotive, with the whole affair rocking and swaying as it was, would simply have been to pave the way for a neat “Herbert Hawkins” on the marble block of their plot in Greenwood Cemetery.
“Well, what under the sun——” began Hawkins.
“Good heavens! This train! The people!” I gasped.
“Well—well—well—let us find the conductor. He'll know what to do!”
“Yes, but he can't stop the machine—and we're backing along at certainly fifty miles an hour; and any minute we may run into the next train behind.”
“Come! Come! Find the conductor!”
We found him very easily.
The conductor was running through the train toward us as we reached the second car, and his face was the face of a fear-racked maniac.
“What's happened?” he shrieked. “Why on earth are we backing?”
“Why, you see——” Hawkins began.
“For God's sake, stop your machine! You're the man who owns it, aren't you?”
“Certainly, certainly. But you see, the mechanism has—er—slipped somewhere—nothing serious, of course—and——”
“Serious!” roared the railroad man. “You call it nothing serious for us to be flying along backwards and the Washington express coming up behind at a mile a minute!”
“Oh! oh! Is it?” Hawkins faltered.
“Yes! Can't you stop her—anyway?”
“Well, not that I know—why, see here!” A smile of relief illumined Hawkins' face.
“Well? Quick, man!”
“We can have a brakeman detach the Alcomotive!”
“And what good'll that do, when she's pushing the train?”
“True, true!” groaned the inventor. “I didn't think of that!”
“I'm going to bring every one into these forward cars,” announced the conductor. “It's the only chance of saving a few lives when the crash comes.”
“Lives,” moaned Hawkins dazedly. “Is there really any danger of——”
The conductor was gone. Hawkins sank upon a seat and gasped and gasped.
“Oh, Griggs, Griggs!” he sobbed. “If I had only known! If I could have foreseen this!”
“If you ever could foresee anything!” I said bitterly.
“But it's partly—yes, it's all that cursed engineer's fault!”
People began to troop into the car. They came crushing along in droves, frightened to death, some weeping, some half-mad with terror.
Hawkins surveyed them with much the expression of Napoleon arriving in Hades. The conductor approached once more.
“They're all in here,” he said resignedly. “Thank Heaven, there are two freight cars on the rear of the train! That may do a little good! But that express! Man, man! What have you done!”
“Did he do it? Is it his fault?” cried a dozen voices.
“No, no, no, no!” shrieked the inventor. “He's lying!”
“You'd better tell the truth now, man,” said the conductor sadly. “You may not have much longer to tell it.”
“Lynch him!” yelled some one.
There was a move toward Hawkins. I don't know where it might have ended. Very likely they would have suspended Hawkins from one of the ventilators and pelted him with hand satchels—and very small blame to them had there been time.
But just as the crowd moved—well, then I fancied that the world had come to an end.
There was a shock, terrific beyond description—window panes clattered into the car—the whole coach was hurled from the tracks and slid sideways for several seconds.
Above us the roof split wide open and let in the sunlight. Passengers were on the seats, the floor, on their heads!
Then, with a final series of creaks and groans, all was still.
Hawkins and I were near the ragged opening which had once been a door. We climbed out to the ground and looked about us.
Providence had been very kind to Hawkins. The Washington express was standing, unexpectedly, at a water tank—part of it, at least. Her huge locomotive lay on its side.
Our two freight cars and two more passenger cars with them were piled up in kindling wood. Even the next car was derailed and badly smashed.
The Alcomotive, too, reclined upon one side and blazed merrily, a fitting tailpiece to the scene.
But not a soul had been killed—we learned that from one of the groups which swarmed from the express, after a muster had been taken of our own passengers. It was a marvel—but a fact.
Hawkins and I edged away slowly.
“Let's get out o' this!” he whispered hoarsely. “There's that infernal conductor. He seems to be looking for some one.”
We did get out of it. In the excitement we sneaked down by the express, past it, and struck into the hills.
Eventually we came out upon the trolley tracks and waited for the car which took us back to Jersey City.
Now, there is really more of this narrative.
The pursuit of Hawkins by the railroad people—their discovery of him at his home that night—the painful transaction by which he was compelled to surrender to them all his holdings in that particular road—the commentary of Mrs. Hawkins.
There is, as I say, more of it. But, on the whole, it is better left untold.