In the country, social intercourse between Hawkins' family and my own is upon the most informal basis. If it pleases us to dine together coatless and cuffless, we do so; and no one suggests that a national upheaval is likely to result.
But in town it is different. The bugaboo of strict propriety seems to take mysterious ascendancy. We still dine together, but it is done in the most proper evening dress. It seems to be the law—unwritten but unalterable—that Hawkins and I shall display upon our respective bosoms something like a square foot of starchy white linen.
I hardly know why I mention this matter of evening clothes, unless it is that the memory of my brand-new dress suit, which passed to another sphere that night, still preys upon my mind.
That night, above mentioned, my wife and I dined in the Hawkins' home.
Hawkins seemed particularly jovial. He appeared to be chuckling with triumph, or some kindred emotion, and his air was even more expansive than usual.
When I mentioned the terrible explosion of the powder works at Pompton—hardly a subject to excite mirth in the normal individual—Hawkins fairly guffawed.
“But, Herbert,” cried his wife, somewhat horrified, “is there anything humorous in the dismemberment of three poor workmen?”
“Oh, it isn't that—it isn't that, my dear,” smiled the inventor. “It merely struck me as funny—this old notion of explosives.”
“What old notion?” I inquired.
“Why, the fallacy of the present methods of manipulating nitro-glycerine.”
“I presume you have a better scheme?” I advanced.
“Mr. Griggs,” cried Hawkins' wife, in terror that was not all feigned, “don't suggest it!”
“Now, my dear——” began Hawkins, stiffening at once.
“Hush, Herbert, hush! You've made mischief enough with your inventions, but you have never, thank goodness, dabbled in explosives.”
“If I wanted to tell you what I know about explosives, and what I could do——” declaimed Hawkins.
“Don't tell us, Mr. Hawkins,” laughed my wife. “A sort of superstitious dread comes over me at the notion.”
“Mrs. Griggs!” exclaimed Hawkins, eying my wife with a glare which in any other man would have earned him the best licking I could give him—but which, like many other things, had to be excused in Hawkins.
“Herbert!” said his wife, authoritatively. “Be still. Actually, you're quite excited!”
Hawkins lapsed into sulky silence, and the meal ended with just a hint of constraint.
Mrs. Hawkins and my wife adjourned to the drawing-room, and Hawkins and I were left, theoretically, to smoke a post-prandial cigar. Hawkins, however, had other plans for my entertainment.
“Are they up-stairs?” he muttered, as footsteps sounded above us.
“They seem to be.”
“Then you come with me,” whispered Hawkins, heading me toward the servants' staircase.
“Where?” I inquired suspiciously.
There was a peculiar glitter in his eye.
“Come along and you'll see,” chuckled Hawkins, beginning the ascent. “Oh, I'll tell you what,” he continued, pausing on the second landing, “these women make me tired!”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, they do. You needn't look huffy, Griggs. It isn't your wife or my wife. It's the whole sex. They chatter and prattle and make silly jokes about things they're absolutely incapable of understanding.”
“My dear Hawkins,” I said soothingly, “you wrong the fair sex.”
“Oh, I wrong 'em, eh? Well, what woman knows the first thing about explosives?” demanded Hawkins heatedly. “Dynamite or rhexite or meganite or carbonite or stonite or vigorite or cordite or ballistite or thorite or maxamite——”
“Stop, Hawkins, stop!” I cried.
“Well, that's all, anyway,” said the inventor. “But what woman knows enough about them to argue the thing intelligently? And yet my wife tells me—I, who have spent nearly half a lifetime in scientific labor—she actually tells me to—to shut up, when I hint at having some slight knowledge of the subject!”
“I know, Hawkins, but your scientific labors have made her—and me—suffer in the past.”
“Oh, they have, have they?” grunted Hawkins, climbing toward the top floor. “Well, come up, Griggs.”
I knew the door at which he stopped. It was that of Hawkins' workshop or laboratory. It was on the floor with the servants, who, poor things, probably did not know or dared not object to the risk they ran.
“What's the peculiar humming?” I asked, pausing on the threshold.
“Only my electric motor,” sneered Hawkins. “It won't bite you, Griggs. Come in.”
“And what is this big, brass bolt on the door?” I continued.
“That? Oh, that's an idea!” cried the inventor. “That's my new springlock. Just look at that lock, Griggs. It simply can't be opened from the outside, and only from the inside by one who knows how to work it. And I'm the only one who knows. When I patent this thing——”
“Well, I wouldn't close the door, Hawkins,” I murmured. “You might faint or something, and I'd be shut in here till somebody remembered to hunt for me.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Hawkins, slamming the door, violently. “Really, for a grown man, you're the most chicken-hearted individual I ever met. But—what's the use of talking about it? To get back to explosives——”
“Oh, never mind the explosives,” I said wearily. “You're right, and that settles it.”
“See here,” said Hawkins sharply; “I had no intention of mentioning explosives to-night, for a particular reason. In a day or two, you'll hear the country ringing with my name, in connection with explosives. But since the subject has come up, if you want to listen to me for a few minutes, I'll interest you mightily.”
Kind Heaven! Could I have realized then the bitter truth of those last words!
“Yes, sir,” the inventor went on, “as I was saying—or was I saying it?—they all have their faults—dynamite, rhexite, meganite, carbonite, ston——”
“You went over that list before.”
“Well, they all have their faults. Either they explode when you don't want them to, or they don't explode when you do want them to, or they're liable to explode spontaneously, or something else. It's all due, as I have invariably contended, to impure nitro-glycerine or unscientific handling of the pure article.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, indeed. Now, what would you say to an explosive——”
“Absolutely nothing,” I replied decidedly. “I should pass it without even a nod.”
“Never mind your nonsense, Griggs. What would you—er—what would you think of an explosive that could be dropped from the roof of a house without detonating?”
“Remarkable!”
“An explosive,” continued Hawkins impressively, “into which a man might throw a lighted lamp without the slightest fear! How would that strike you?”
“Well, Hawkins,” I said, “I think I should have grave doubts of the man's mental condition.”
“Oh, just cut out that foolish talk,” snapped the inventor. “I'm quite serious. Suppose I should tell you that I had thought and thought over this problem, and finally hit upon an idea for just such a powder? Where would dynamite and rhexite and meganite and all the rest of them be, beside——”
He paused theatrically.
“Hawkinsite!”
“Don't know, Hawkins,” I said, unable to absorb any of his enthusiasm. “But let us thank goodness that it is only an idea as yet.”
“Oh, but it isn't!” cried the inventor.
“Hawkins!” I gasped, springing to my feet. “What do you mean?”
“I mean just this: Do you see that little vat in the corner?”
I stared fearfully in the direction indicated. A little vat, indeed, I saw. It stood there, half-filled with a sticky mess, through which an agitator, run by the electric motor, was revolving slowly.
“That's Hawkinsite, in the process of manufacture!” the inventor announced.
A sickly terror crept over me. I made instinctively for the door.
“Oh, come back,” said Hawkins. “You can't get out, anyway, until I undo the lock. But there's no danger whatever, my dear boy. Just sit down and I'll explain why.”
I had no choice about sitting down; a most peculiar weakness of the knees made standing for the moment impossible. I drew my chair to the diagonally opposite corner of the apartment, and sat there with my eyes glued upon the vat.
“Now, when all these fellows go about nitrating their glycerine,” said Hawkins serenely, “they simply overlook the scientific principle which I have discovered. For instance, out there at Pompton the vat exploded in the very act of mixing in the glycerine. That's just what is being done over in that corner at this minute——”
“Ouch!” I cried involuntarily.
“But it won't happen here—it can't happen here,” said the inventor impatiently. “I am using an entirely different combination of chemicals. Now, if there was any trouble of that sort coming, Griggs, the contents of that vat would have begun to turn green before now. But as you see——”
“Haw—Hawkins!” I croaked hoarsely, pointing a shaking finger at the machine.
“Well, what is it now?”
“Look!” I managed to articulate.
“Oh, Lord!” sniffed the inventor. “I suppose as soon as I said that, you began to see green shades appear, eh? Why—dear me!”
Hawkins stepped rapidly over to the side of his mixer. Then he stepped away with considerably greater alacrity.
There was no two ways about it; the devilish mess in the vat was taking on a marked tinge of green!
“Well—I—I guess I'll shut off the power,” muttered Hawkins, suiting the action to the word.
“When the agitator has stopped, Griggs, the mass will cool at once, so you needn't worry.”
“If it didn't cool, would it—would it blow up?” I quavered.
“Oh, it would,” admitted Hawkins, rather nervously. “But as soon as the mixing ceases, the slight color disappears, as you see.”
“I don't see it; it seems to me to be getting greener than ever.”
“Well, it's not!” the inventor snapped. “Five minutes from now, that stuff will be an even brown once more.”
“And while it's regaining the even brown, why not clear out of here?” I said eagerly.
“Yes, we may as well, I suppose,” said Hawkins, with a readiness which refused to be masked under his assumption of reluctance. “Come on, Griggs.”
Hawkins turned the lever on his fancy lock, remarking again:
“Come on.”
“Well, open the door.”
“It's op—why, what's wrong here?” muttered the inventor, twisting the lever back and forth several times.
“Oh, good heavens, Hawkins!” I groaned. “Has your lock gone back on you, too?”
“No, it has not. Of course not,” growled the inventor, tugging at his lever with almost frantic energy. “It's stuck—a little new—that's all. Er—do you see a screw-driver on that table, Griggs?”
I handed him the tool as quickly as possible, noting at the same time that despite the cessation of the stirring “Hawkinsite” was getting greener every second.
“I'll just take it off,” panted Hawkins, digging at one of the screws. “No time to tinker with it now.”
“Why not? There's no danger.”
“Certainly there isn't. But you—you seem to be a little nervous about it, Griggs, and——”
“Hawkins,” I cried, “what are those bubbles of red gas?”
“What bubbles?” Hawkins turned as if he had been shot. “Great Scott, Griggs! There were no bubbles of red gas rising out of that stuff, were there?”
“There they go again,” I said, pointing to the vat, from which a new ebullition of scarlet vapor had just risen. “What does it mean?”
“Mean?” shrieked Hawkins, turning white and trembling in every limb.
“Yes, mean!” I repeated, shaking him. “Does it mean that——”
“It means that the cursed stuff has over-heated itself, after all. Lord! Lord! However did it happen? Something must have been impure. Something——”
“Never mind something. What will it do?”
“It—it—oh, my God, Griggs! It'll blow this house into ten thousand pieces within two minutes! Why—why, there's power enough in that little vat to demolish the Brooklyn Bridge, according to my calculations. There's enough explosive force in that much Hawkinsite to wreck every office building down-town!”
“And we're shut in here with it!”
“Yes! Yes! But let us——”
“Here! Suppose I turn the water into the thing?”
“Don't!” shouted the inventor wildly, battering at the door with his fists. “It would send us into kingdom come the second it touched! Don't stand there gaping, Griggs! Help me smash down this door! We must get out, man! We must get the women out! We must warn the neighborhood! Smash her, Griggs! Smash her! Smash the door!”
“Hawkins,” I said, resignedly, as a vicious “sizzzz” announced the evolution of a great puff of red gas, “we can never do it in two minutes. Better not attract the rest of the household by your racket. They may possibly escape. Stop!”
“And stay here and be blown to blazes?” cried Hawkins. “No, sir! Down she goes!”
He seized a stool and dealt a crashing blow upon the panel. It splintered. He raised the stool again, and I could hear footsteps hurrying from below. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, and——
Well, I don't know that I can describe my sensations with any accuracy, vivid as they were at the time.
Some resistless force lifted me from the floor and propelled me toward the half shattered door. Dimly I noted that the same thing had happened to Hawkins. For the tiniest fraction of a second he seemed to be floating horizontally in the air. Then I felt my head collide with wood; the door parted, and I shot through the opening.
I saw the hallway before me; I remember observing with vague wonder that the gas-light went out just as it caught my eye. And then an awful flash blinded me, a roar of ten thousand cannon seemed to split my skull—and that was all.
My eyes opened in the Hawkins' drawing-room—or what remained of it. Our family physician was diligently winding a bandage around my right ankle. An important-looking youth in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was stitching up a portion of my left forearm with cheerful nonchalance.
My brand new dress suit, I observed, had lost all semblance to an article of clothing; they had covered me, as I lay upon the couch, with a torn portiere.
{Illustration: “I saw the figure of a policeman standing tiptoe upon a satin chair."}
The apartment was strangely dark. Here and there stood a lantern, such as are used by the fire department. In the dim light, I saw the figure of a policeman standing tiptoe upon a satin chair, plugging with soap the broken gaspipe which had once supported the Hawkins' chandelier.
The ceiling was all down. The walls were bare to the lath in huge patches. The windows had disappeared, and a chill autumn night wind swept through the room.
Bric-a-brac there was none, although here and there, in the mass of plaster on the floor, gleamed bits of glass and china which might once have been parts of ornaments. Hawkinsite had evidently not been quite as powerful as its inventor had imagined, but it had certainly contained force enough to blow about ten thousand dollars out of Hawkins' bank account.
From the street came the hoarse murmur of a crowd. I twisted my head and my eyes fell upon two firemen in the hallway. They were dragging down a line of hose from somewhere up-stairs.
Across the room sat my wife and Mrs. Hawkins, disheveled, but alive and apparently unharmed. Hawkins himself leaned wearily back upon a divan, a huge bandage sewed about his forehead, one arm in a sling, and a police sergeant at his side, notebook in hand.
I felt a fiendish exultation at the sight of that official; for one fond moment I hoped that Hawkins was under arrest, that he was in for a life sentence.
“He's conscious, doctor,” said the ambulance surgeon.
“Ah, so he is,” said my own medical man, as the ladies rushed to my side. “Now, Mr. Griggs, do you feel any pain in the——”
“Oh, Griggs!” cried Hawkins, staggering toward me. “Have you come back to life? Say, Griggs, just think of it! My workshop's blown to smithereens! Every single note I ever made has been destroyed! Isn't it aw——”
In joyful chorus, my wife, Mrs. Hawkins and I said:
“Thank Heaven!”
“But think of it! My notes! The careful record of half a——”
“Herbert!” said his—considerably—better half. “That—will—do!”
“It—oh, well,” groaned the inventor disconsolately, limping back to the divan and the somewhat astonished sergeant of police. Hawkins must have had some sort of influence with the press. Beyond a bare mention of the explosion, the matter never found its way into the newspapers.
After I got around again I tried in vain to spread the tale broadcast. I had some notion that the notoriety might cure Hawkins.
But, after all, I don't know that it would have done much good. I cannot think that a man whose inventive genius will survive an explosion of Hawkinsite is likely to be greatly worried by mere newspaper notoriety.
The name and the precise location of the hotel are immaterial. If you happened to be there that night you know very nearly all that occurred; if not, you have in all probability never heard of it, for I understand that the proprietors took every precaution against publicity.
Let it suffice, then, that the hotel is a prominent and a fashionable one, located somewhere between the Battery and the Bronx, and that Hawkins and I sat at a table in the restaurant on that particular evening and feasted.
The inventor had called at my office and dragged me away to dine with him, rather to my surprise, for I believed him to be somewhere in the South with his wife.
You see, after a certain explosion in their home, a month or two of reconstruction had been necessary; and I opine that Mrs. Hawkins had thought best to remove her husband while the repairs were being made. If he had been there it is dollars to doughnuts he would have invented a new bricklayer or a novel plastering machine and wrecked the whole place anew.
It was in reply to my query as to his presence in New York that Hawkins said:
“Well, you know, Griggs, it impressed me as very foolish from the first—that idea of my wife's of getting out of town while the place was being rebuilt.”
“She may have had her reasons, Hawkins,” I suggested.
“Possibly, although I fail to see what they were. When a man's own home is being built—or rebuilt—his place is on the spot, to see that everything is done right. Now, how, for instance, could I, away down in Georgia, know that those workmen were properly fitting up my new workshop?”
“Workshop?” I gasped. “Are you having another one built?”
“Certainly,” snapped Hawkins. “I didn't mention it to Mrs. Hawkins, for she seems foolishly set against my continuing my scientific labors. But I fixed it on the sly with the architect. It's all finished now—has been for a week and over—power and everything else.”
“Hawkins,” I said, sadly, “are you going right on with your experimenting?”
“Of course I am,” replied the inventor, rather warmly. “It's altogether beyond your poor little brain, Griggs, but scientific work is the very breath of my life! I can't be happy without it; I'm not going to try. Why, all those seven weeks down South one idea simply roared in my head. I had to come home and perfect it—and I did. I've been in New York nearly three weeks, working on it,” concluded Hawkins, complacently.
“And you've managed to perfect another accursed——” I began.
Just then I ceased speaking and watched Hawkins. His ears had pricked up like a horse's. I, too, listened and heard what seemed to be a heavy automobile outdoors; at any rate, it was the characteristic chugg-chugg-chugg of a touring car, and nowadays a commonplace sound enough.
But it affected Hawkins deeply. An ecstatic smile overspread his face, and he drew in his breath with a long, happy:
“A-a-a-a-a-ah!”
“Been buying a new auto, Hawkins?” I asked, carelessly.
“Auto be hanged!” replied the inventor, energetically. “Do you imagine that an automobile is making that noise? I guess not! That's my new invention, Griggs!”
“What!” I cried. “Here? In this hotel?”
“Right here in this hotel—right under our feet,” said Hawkins, proudly. “That noise comes from the Hawkins Gasowashine!”
I think I stared open-mouthed at Hawkins for a moment or two; I know that I leaned back and shook with as violent mirth as might be permitted in so solemnly proper a resort.
“Well, does that impress you as particularly humorous?” demanded Hawkins, angrily.
“Hawkins,” I said, “why don't you start in and write nonsense verse? There's a fortune waiting for you.”
“I must say, Griggs,” rejoined the inventor, sourly, “that you have very little comprehension of the advertising value of a good name. Who under the sun would ever remember the 'Hawkins Gasolene Washing Machine,' if they saw it in a magazine? But—'The Gasowashine'!”
“So it's a washing machine?”
“Of course. It's the one perfect contrivance for washing and drying dishes; and let me tell you the basic principle of that machine breathes genius, if I do say it. Why, Griggs, just think! You can pile in three or four hundred dishes, simply start the motor, and then sit down while the clean, dry dishes are piled neatly on the table.”
“And they're really using it here? It—it works?” I asked, wonderingly.
“Well, they're going to use it,” said Hawkins, rising. “I have consented to allow them to try my model. It arrived here just before we did.”
“Hawkins, have we been sitting right over that thing all this time?”
“Don't try to be comic, Griggs,” said the inventor, bruskly. “I'm going down to see who's fooling with that motor. It should not have been touched, although I must say it's a satisfaction to sit in a first-class place like this and hear my own machinery running. Are you coming?”
I will admit that I was curious about the contrivance. I followed Hawkins through the crowded dining-room to a door in the back.
Then, dodging a dozen hurrying waiters, we made our way down an incline into the kitchen and through that apartment, past steam tables and ranges and pots and kettles and other paraphernalia of the cuisine.
At the farther end of the room stood a massive affair of oak. It looked, as nearly as it resembled any other thing on earth, like a piano box; but on each side, near the top, was a huge fly-wheel, the two being apparently fastened to the ends of an axle.
For the rest of the mechanism, it was all concealed. I rightly surmised the monstrosity to be the Gasowashine.
The fly-wheels were revolving slowly, and this seemed to irritate Hawkins.
“Good-evening, Mr. Macdougal,” he said to a puzzled looking gentleman, who stood eying the affair. “Mr. Griggs, Mr. Macdougal, the manager. So some one started it, did he?”
“One of the 'buses happened to touch it, and it started itself,” replied the manager, gazing on the contrivance. “It's quite safe to have about, is it not, Mr. Hawkins?”
“Safe? Certainly it is safe.”
“I mean to say, it won't injure the dishes?” the gentleman continued, with a doubtful smile. “You see, we have filled the main compartment with hot water, as you directed, and put in three hundred pieces of our best crockery.”
“Mr. Macdougal,” said Hawkins icily, “if one dish is broken, I'll pay for it and make you a present of the machine, if you say so. If you do not wish to make the test, doubtless there are other hotel men in New York who will appreciate its advantages.”
“Not at all, not at all,” cried the manager. “I appreciate fully——”
“All right,” said Hawkins shortly. “Now, the dishes are all in, are they? Very well. I'll explain the thing to Mr. Griggs and then start it. You see, Griggs, the dishes are in here.”
He tapped the side of the big box.
“When I turn on the power, they are thoroughly rubbed and soused by my Automatic Scrubber—a separate patent, by the way—and then they reach this spot.”
He rapped upon the box near the end.
“Here they are forced against a continuous dish-towel, which runs across rollers all the time. Just think of it! Sixty yards of dish-towel, rolling over and over and over! After that—but you shall see how they look after that. I'll start her.”
He twisted a valve of some sort. The chugg-chugging became more pronounced, and the fly-wheels revolved with very perceptibly increased rapidity.
From somewhere inside the thing emanated a gentle rattle and swish of crockery and suds. Hawkins stood back and regarded it proudly.
“There's another great point about the Gasowashine, too,” he said. “As you see, it's too heavy to shove from place to place. What do we do?”
“Leave it where it is,” I hazarded.
“Not at all. We simply invert it! The whole business is water-tight. Every door fits so closely that it's impossible for a drop to escape. Now, if I wished to move it to the other end of this room, I should simply turn the Gasowashine upside down, allow it to rest upon the fly-wheels, which keep on revolving of course, and steer it wherever I desired.”
“And so you might go a little better and put on a saddle and a steering-wheel and take a ride around the Park while you were washing dishes?” I suggested, somewhat to the manager's amusement.
“Possibly you think it's impracticable?” Hawkins rapped out. “Perhaps you don't realize that there's a five horsepower motor running that?”
“There, there, Hawkins,” I said soothingly, “if you say that Washy-washine is good for a trans-kitchen on a transcontinental tour, I'll take your word for it.”
“You don't have to!” cried the inventor wrathfully. “I'll demonstrate it. See here, you!”
This to a corpulent French gentleman in white, who had just flipped an omelette to a platter and sent it upon its way. “Come and give me a hand here. Just help turn this thing over.”
“Comme cela?” inquired the astonished cook, making pantomime with his hands.
“Exactly. That's right. Catch hold of the other side and don't let go until I tell you.”
The cook complied. Really, the Gasowashine seemed to turn more easily than might have been expected from its huge bulk.
A strain or two, a puffed command from Hawkins, an ominous sliding about of hidden dishes, and the machine lurched forward, poised a moment on its edge and turned quite gently, so that the wheels approached the floor.
“Now, easy! Easy!” cried Hawkins. “Don't let the wheels down until I tell you, and don't let go till I give the word. Now down! Down! Gently.”
The cook seemed to be feeling for a new grip.
“Here! What are you doing?” cried the inventor. “Don't touch any of those handles.”
“It is that I seek a place for ze hand,” murmured the cook apologetically.
“Well, find it and let her down. Got your grip?”
“Aha! I have eet!” announced the Frenchman, clutching one of the brass knobs.
“All right. Down!”
Down went the Gasowashine. And a very small fraction of one second later things began to happen.
Each of Hawkins' inventions possesses a latent devil. You have only to brush against the handle or the valve or the string, or whatever it may be that connects him with the outer world, and the demon awakes.
In this case, the cook must have pinched the tail of the devil of the Gasowashine, for he sprang into action with a rush.
“Is it to release the hold?” asked the Frenchman as the wheels touched the floor.
“No, not till I—hey!” cried Hawkins, starting back in amazement.
“Our—our dishes!” ejaculated the manager breathlessly.
The Gasowashine and the cook were traveling across the kitchen together. The Frenchman, with remarkable presence of mind, was behind the machine and dragging back with all his might; but as well could he have hauled to a standstill the locomotive of the Empire State Express.
The Gasowashine, puffing heavily as any racing auto, had plans of its own and was executing them to the accompaniment of a simply appalling rattle of crockery.
“Don't let go! Don't let go!” cried Hawkins. “Keep hold, my man!”
“I do! I do!Mais, mon Dieu!” called the Frenchman jerkily.
“But, Mr. Hawkins,” gasped the manager as we hurried after, “what will become of our china?”
“The devil take your china!” snapped Hawkins, forgetful of his recent guarantee. “If they run into the wall, it'll break the motor!”
They were not going to run into the wall. The Gasowashine approached the side of the apartment, swerved easily to the left, and made for the incline which led to the hotel dining-room.
“Good gracious!” screamed the manager. “Not up there! Knock that thing over on its side, Henri!”
“Don't you do it, Henri,” cried Hawkins. “If you do it'll smash.”
“Let it smash!” roared the manager. “Throw it over, Henri!”
“But I cannot,” gasped the Frenchman as the Gasowashine sets its wheels upon the incline.
“Here! Somebody get in front of that thing!” commanded Macdougal. “Don't let it go up. Knock it over!”
“If you knock that over!” stormed Hawkins, springing to the side of his contrivance and feeling excitedly for the valve which should shut off the supply of gasolene.
Two or three waiters, having in mind that their jobs depended upon Macdougal's approbation rather than Hawkins' strove to obey the former's injunction. They ran to the fore end of the Gasowashine and seized it and pushed back upon it and sideways.
And did the Gasowashine mind? Hardly.
It bowled the first man over so neatly that he fell squarely beneath one of his fellows, who was descending loaded with dishes. It rolled one of its wheels across the toes of the next antagonist, and drew from him a shriek which sent people in the dining-room to their feet.
After thatcoup, the Gasowashine had things all its own way on the incline.
The French cook still maintained his hold. Hawkins pranced alongside and fumbled feverishly, first with that knob, then with this little wheel.
Several of them he managed to move, but to no good end. Whether excitement had confused Hawkins' mind on the details of his invention I cannot say; but certainly, far from controlling the Gasowashine, he made matters worse.
The machine puffed harder, the wheels revolved more rapidly, and the whole affair climbed steadily toward the dining-room, dragging the tenacious cook along the incline in a sitting posture.
Thus was made the first public appearance of the Gasowashine, to the utter amazement of some hundred diners.
Bursting through the doors, it snorted for a moment, and seemed to be considering the long rows of tables before it. Several waiters, gasping with astonishment at the uncouth apparition, ran to check its progress.
That seemed to stir the Gasowashine anew. It emitted a sharp puff of rage and plunged headlong forward.
Hawkins pranced along by its side, half turning as he ran to cry:
“Now, just—just make way, ladies and gentlemen, please. It's not at all dangerous. Just make way.”
They made way, without losing any undue amount of time.
One or two women fainted unostentatiously.
Most of them, men and women, scrambled away from the main aisle, which seemed to have been selected by the Gasowashine for its further performances.
“Hawkins,” I panted when I had managed to regain breath, “why don't you knock the cursed thing over?”
“There, there, there, Griggs,” sizzled Hawkins, dashing the perspiration from his eyes. “I've almost control of it now. I'll just shut off this——”
He gave a powerful twist at one of the handles.
“That'll——” he began.
“Pouff!” roared the Gasowashine, rearing up and lunging wildly from side to side for a moment.
Then it started down the aisle in earnest. Bang! Bang! Bang! echoed from the crockery inside. Puff! Puff! Puff! said the motor, driving its hardest.
{Illustration: “I shall let go? Yes?”}
“Ciel!” wailed the cook “I shall let it go? Yes?”
“No!” shouted Hawkins, running beside the unhappy man. “In just a second it'll——”
It did, although not perhaps what Hawkins expected.
I saw a little door in the side of the infernal machine flip open. I perceived a shower of finely subdivided crockery hanging over the cook for a moment.
Then the bits of china and some two or three gallons of greasy water descended upon the Frenchman and the door flipped to once more. The Gasowashine had dislodged the cook and was free to pursue its wanderings unhindered.
And certainly it made the most of the opportunity.
For three or four yards it bumped along, ramming its top-heavy nose into the carpet and seeming to become more and more enraged at its slow progress. Then it paused a moment and pawed at the floor with its whizzing wheels.
I fancied that I could upset it then, and sprang forward to do so, regardless of Hawkins.
I might have known better. I was within perhaps ten feet of the Gasowashine when another door, this time a smaller one toward the front, squeaked for a moment and then flew open. Simultaneously a bolt of something white shot forth and made for my head.
Regardless of appearances, I dropped flat to the floor and wriggled out of the danger zone.
When I arose, I realized what new disaster had taken place. It was the sixty yards of dish-towel this time!
Presumably, a roller had smashed and released the thing; at any rate, there it was, yard after yard of it, trailing after the Gasowashine as it thumped energetically toward the street door.
And that was not the worst. The end of the toweling entwined itself about one of the dining-tables and held there. The table went over, collided with the next and emptied that, too.
Then the next followed and the next, each new crash echoed by the frightened squeals of the guests, now lined up against the opposite walls.
The tenth table, with its load of crockery and glassware, had been sent to destruction before Macdougal, the manager, finally gained the dining-room. Tears rose to his eyes as he made a rapid survey of the havoc, but he kept his wits and shouted:
“Knock it over! Somebody knock it over!” A big military-looking man in evening clothes sprang forward. I offered a prayer for him and held my breath. He rushed to the Gasowashine, seized it with his mighty arms, and gave a shove.
“M-m-m-mister,” quavered Hawkins, wriggling from under one of the tables, “don't do that! The g-g-g-gasolene tank!”
But it was done. With a dull crash, the only perfect machine for washing and drying dishes fell to its side. The big man smiled at it.
And then—well, then a sheet of flame seemed to envelope the unfortunate. A heavy boom shook the apartment, the big glass door splintered musically and fell inward, the lights in that end of the room were extinguished.
Then followed the screams of the terrified guests, the patter of numberless fragments of crockery and countless drops of filthy dishwater as they reached the floor. And then the big man picked himself up some twenty feet from the spot where he had dared the wrath of the Gasowashine.
And Hawkins standing majestically in the wreck of a table, with one foot in a salad bowl and the other oozing nesselrode pudding, while an unbroken stream of mayonnaise dressing meandered down the back of his coat—Hawkins, standing thus, shook his fist at the big man and, above the turmoil, shouted at him:
“I told you so!”
Such was the fate of the first, last, and only Gasowashine.
Bellboys, clerks, and waiters pelted with hand grenades its smoldering remains and squirted chemical fire-extinguishers upon it; but the Gasowashine's day was done. Its turbulent spirit had passed to another sphere.
Later, when some measure of order had been restored to the dining-room, when the door had been boarded up and the inquisitive police satisfied and the street crowd dispersed; when a sympathetic waiter had partially cleansed Hawkins, and that gentleman had suggested that we might as well depart, he received a peremptory invitation to call upon the proprietor in his private office.
The proprietor was a calm, cold man. He viewed Hawkins with an inscrutable stare for some time before he spoke.
“I hardly know, Mr. Hawkins,” he said at last, “whom to blame for this.”
“Well, I know! That hulking lummox who knocked over my——”
“At any rate, the machine was yours, I fear you will have to pay for the damage.”
“I will, eh?” blustered Hawkins. “Well, I told your man Macdougal that if one dish was broken I'd pay for it. Here's the dollar for the dish! Come, Griggs.”
“Um-um. So you refuse to settle?” smiled the proprietor.
“Absolutely and positively!” declared Hawkins.
“Well, I think that, pending a suit for damages, I can have you held on a charge of disorderly conduct,” mused the calm man. “Mr. Macdougal, will you kindly call an officer?”
Hawkins wilted at that. His checkbook came forth, and the string of figures he was compelled to write made my heart bleed.
When he had exchanged the slip for a receipt, Hawkins and I made for the side door and slunk out into the night.
The Gasowashine, I presume, or such combustible fragments as remained, found an inglorious grave next day in the ranges of the same kitchen which had witnessed the start of its short little life.