"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 that coup, 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.



"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.



CHAPTER VII.

Perhaps some of the blame should rest upon the barbaric habit of having Sunday dinner in the middle of the afternoon.

Had it been evening when Hawkins and his better half sat down to dinner with us, it would not, naturally, have been daylight; and much unpleasantness might have been avoided, for the gas had not yet been turned on in the modeled Hawkins residence, and an inspection would have been impossible.

Again, I may have started the trouble myself by bringing up the subject of the renovations.

"Yes, the work's all done," said Hawkins, with a more genial air than he usually exhibited when that topic was touched. "I tell you, it's a model home now."

"Particularly in containing no new inventions by its owner," added Mrs. Hawkins.

"Oh, those may come later," said the gifted inventor, casting a complacent wink in my direction.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," replied the lady rather tartly. "We escaped with our lives when the house was wrecked, but next time——"

"Madam," flared Hawkins, "if you knew what that house——"

Just here my wife broke in with a spasmodic remark anent the doings of the Russians in Manchuria, and a discussion of the merits of Hawkins' inventions was happily averted.

But the spunky light didn't die out of Hawkins' eye. He appeared to be nursing something beside wrath, and when we arose from the table he remarked shortly:

"Come up to the house, Griggs, and smoke a cigar while we look it over."

"And note the charm of the inventionless home," supplemented his wife.

"Inventionless fiddlestick!" snapped Hawkins as he slammed the door behind us. "It's a wonder to me that women weren't created either with sense or without tongues."

I made no comment and we walked in silence to the Hawkins house.

It had been done over in a style which must have made Hawkins' bank account look like an Arabian grain field after a particularly bad locust year; but beyond noting the general beauty of the decorations, I found nothing remarkable until we reached the second floor.

There, as we gazed from the back windows, it struck me that something familiar had departed, and I asked:

"What's become of the fire-escape?"

"Don't you see, eh?" said the inventor, with a prodigiously mysterious smile.

"Hardly. Have you made it invisible?"

"No and yes," chuckled Hawkins. "What would you say, Griggs, to a fire-escape that you kept indoors until it was needed?"

"I should say 'nay, nay,' if any one wanted me to use it."

"No, I mean—oh, come up-stairs and I'll show it to you at once."

"Show me what, Hawkins?" I cried, detaining him with a firm hand. "Is it another contrivance? Has it a motor? Does it use gasolene or gunpowder or dynamite?"

"No, it does not!" said the inventor gruffly, trudging toward the top of the house.

"There!" he exclaimed when we had reached the upper floor. "That's it. What do you think of it?"

It was a device of strange appearance. It seemed to be a huge clothes-basket, such as is used for transportation of the family "wash," and it was piled with what appeared to be the remains of as many white sun-umbrellas as could have been collected at half a dozen seaside resorts.

"What is it?" I said with a blank smile. "Junk?"

"No, it's not junk. That mass of ribs and white silk which looks like junk to your unaccustomed eye constitutes a set of aeroplanes or wings."

"But the other thing is merely the common or domestic variety of wash-basket, is it not?"

"Well—er—yes," admitted Hawkins with cold dignity. "That happened to be the most suitable thing for my purpose in this experimental model. Now, you see, when the wings are spread the basket is suspended beneath just as the car of a balloon is suspended from a gas-bag, and——"

"Aha! I see it all now!" I cried. "You fill the basket, point it in the right direction, and it flaps its wings and flies away to the washlady!"

"That, Griggs," sneered Hawkins, "is about the view a poor little brain like yours, permeated with cheap humor, would take. Really, I don't suppose you could guess the purpose or the name of that thing if you tried a week."

"Candidly, I don't think I could. What is it?"

"It's the Hawkins Anti-Fire-Fly!" said the inventor.

"The Hawkins—what?" I ejaculated.

"The Anti-Fire-Fly!" repeated Hawkins enthusiastically. "Say, Griggs, how that will sound in an advertisement: 'Fly Away From Fire With The Anti-Fire-Fly!' Great, isn't it?"

"So it's a fire escape?"

"Certainly," chuckled Hawkins, digging around among the ribs and bringing into tangible shape what looked like several sets of huge bird-wings. "No more climbing down red-hot ladders through belching flames! No more children being thrown from fifth story windows! No, siree! All we have to do now is to place the Anti-Fire-Fly on the window-sill, spread the wings, jump into the basket, push her off, and——"

"And drop to instant death!"

"And float gently away from the fire and down to the earth!" concluded Hawkins, opening the window and shoving out the basket until it fairly hung over the back yard. "Just watch me."

"See here!" I cried. "You're not going to get into that thing?"

"I'm not, eh? You watch me!"

Hawkins had clambered into the basket before I could lay a hand on him.

"Now!" he cried, giving a push with his foot.

My breathing apparatus seemed to go on strike. Hawkins, basket, wings, and all dropped from the window.

For an instant they went straight toward the earth; then, like a parachute opening, the wings spread gracefully, the descent slackened, and Hawkins floated down, down, down—until he landed in the center of the yard without a jar.

Really, I was amazed. It seemed to be either a special dispensation of Providence or an invention of Hawkins' which really worked.

A minute or two later he had labored back to my side, up the stairs, with the aerial fire-escape on his back.

"There!" he exclaimed. "What do you think of that?"

"It certainly seems to be a success."

"Well, rather! Now come up to the roof and have a drop with me. We'll go into the street this time, and——"

"Thank you, Hawkins," I said, positively. "Don't count me in on that. I'll wait for the fire before dabbling with your Anti-Fire-Fly."

"Oh, well, come with me, anyway. I'm going down once more. You've no idea of the sensation."

It was a considerable feat of engineering to persuade the Anti-Fire-Fly into passing through the scuttle, but Hawkins finally accomplished it, and pushed the contrivance to the edge of the roof.

"Now that thing will carry a small family with ease and safety," he said proudly. "Just sit down in the basket and feel the roominess. Oh, don't be afraid. I'll come, too."

"Yes, it's very nice," I said somewhat nervously, after crouching beside him for a moment. "I think I'll get out now."

"All ri—oh! Here! Wait!" cried Hawkins, grabbing my coat and pulling me back. "Sit down!"

"What for?"

"The—the—the wings!" stuttered the inventor. "The—the wind!"

"Great Scott!" I shouted as a sudden breeze caught the wings and tilted the basket far to one side. "Let me out!"

"No, no!" shrieked Hawkins wildly. "You'll break your neck, man! We're right on the edge of the roof now, and——"

And we were over the edge!

There was the street—miles below! Sickening dread choked me. I closed my eyes and gripped the basket as the accursed thing swayed from side to side and threatened every instant to precipitate us on the hard stones.

But it grew steadier presently. I looked about.

There was Hawkins hanging on for dear life, and white as death, but still serene. There, also, were numerous graveled roofs—some twenty feet below.

We were going up! Also, I was startled to note that the high wind was driving us down-town at a rapid pace.

"See here, Hawkins!" I said. "What does this mean?"

"M-m-means that a big wind has caught us," replied the inventor with a sickly smile.

"And when do you suppose it's going to let go of us?"

"Well—we—we may be able to catch one of those high roofs over there," murmured Hawkins with assurance that did not reassure. "You—you know we can't go up very far, Griggs. This thing was not built for flying."

"For anything that wasn't made for the purpose, it's doing wonders," I retorted. Then a sudden puff sent us up fully ten feet. "Heavens! There goes our chance at those roofs!"

"Dear me! So it does!" muttered the inventor as we sailed gracefully over the chimney-tops. "How unfortunate!"

"It'll be a lot more unfortunate when we pitch down into the street!" I snarled.

"Now, Griggs," said Hawkins argumentatively as we sped down-town on the steadily rising wind, "why do you always take this pessimistic view of things? Can't you see—is it beyond your little mental scope to realize that we have fairly fallen over a great discovery, something that men have been seeking for ages? Don't you comprehend, from the very fact of our being up here and still rising that these wings accidentally embody the vital principles of the dirigible——"

"Oh, dry up!" I growled as we flitted swiftly past a church steeple.

Hawkins regarded me sadly, and I sadly regarded the street below and tried to assimilate the fact that we were two hundred feet above the ground and rising at every puff of wind; that we were in a crazy clothes-basket, suspended from a crazier pair of wings, absolutely at the mercy of the breeze and likely at any moment to drop to eternal smash!

I did realize, without any effort, that my lower limbs were developing excruciating shooting pains from the cramped position.

The time passed very slowly. The houses below passed with astounding rapidity.

I thought of our wives, sitting calmly in my home, ignorant of our plight. I wondered what their sentiments would be when some kindly ambulance surgeon had brought home such fragments of Hawkins and me as might have been collected with a dust-pan and brush.

I wondered whether the accursed Anti-Fire-Fly would dump us out and flutter away into eternity, to leave our fate unexplained, or whether it would accompany us to our doom and be found gloating over the respective grease-spots that would represent all that was mortal of Hawkins and myself.

And at about this point in my meditations, I noted that we were sailing over Union Square.

"Isn't it fine?" cried Hawkins enthusiastically. "You never came down-town like this before, Griggs."

"I never expect to again, Hawkins," I sighed.

"Why not? Why, Griggs, this thing is only the nucleus of my future airship, and yet see how it floats! Oh, I've thought it all out in the last five minutes. It's astonishing that it never occurred to me before. Now, these wings, you see, are so constructed——"

"See here, Hawkins," I said, "do you mean to say that you expect to get out of this thing alive?"

"Certainly," replied the inventor in astonishment. "There's no danger. I can see that now, although I was a trifle startled at first. It's only a matter of minutes when we shall go near enough to one of those big office buildings to grab it and stop ourselves."

"And clamber down the side—twenty or thirty stories?"

"And even if we can't land, we shan't fall. The construction of these wings is such——"

"Oh, hang the construction of your wings!" I cried. "We're going right toward the bay—suppose the wind dies down and lets us into the water?"

"Well, these wings are water-proof, you know," said Hawkins. "They might——"

"Yes, and the bay might dry up, so that we could walk back if we escaped being broken in pieces, Hawkins," I sneered.

Hawkins subsided. The breeze did not.

It was one of the most impolitely persistent breezes I have ever encountered. It seemed bent on landing us in New York harbor, and before many minutes we were suspended high above that expansive, and in some circumstances, charming body of water.



Furthermore, having wafted us something like a quarter of a mile from shore, it proceeded to die out in a manner which was, to say the least, disheartening.

Hawkins grew paler by perceptible shades as we progressed, ever nearer the water and farther from hope; and it was not until I opened my mouth to vent a few last invidious criticisms of him and his methods that the inventor's face brightened.

"By Jove, Griggs! Look! That ferry-boat! That fellow on the roof! He's got a boat-hook! Hey! Hey! Hey! you!"

The individual gazed aloft and nearly collapsed with astonishment.

"Catch us!" bawled the inventor frantically. "Catch the basket with that hook! We want to come aboard! Hurry up!"

The boat was going in our direction and rather faster. The man on the roof seemed to comprehend. He reached up with his hook. He leaped a couple of times in vain.

And then we felt a shock which told of our capture! I breathed a long, happy sigh.

In dealing with Hawkins' inventions, long, happy sighs are premature unless you are positive that your entire anatomical structure is complete, and likewise certain that the contrivance lies at your feet in a condition of total wreck.

The basket was suspended from a thin, steel frame, from which several dozen stout cords rose to that idiotic pair of wings. When we were fairly caught, Hawkins cried:

"Now, Griggs, stand up and catch the frame and pull the whole business down with us. And you, down there, pull hard! Pull hard, now!"

I seized the steel frame on one side, Hawkins on the other, and we pulled. And the man with the boat-hook pulled. And at the psychological moment the wind rose afresh and pulled at the wings with a mighty pull!

Some seconds of dizzy swirling in the air, and the clothes-basket portion of the Anti-Fire-Fly lay on the roof of the ferry-boat, while Hawkins and I hung far above, entangled in the cords and clutching them wildly and rising steadily once more!

"Great Caesar's ghost!" gurgled the inventor. "This is awful!"

"Awful!" I gasped when breath had returned. "It's—it's——"

"Lord! Lord! We're going straight for Staten Island. Don't move, Griggs."

"I can't," I said. "I'm caught tight here. Good-by, Hawkins."

"We're—we're not done for yet," quavered that individual. "We may hit land. But isn't—isn't it terrible?"

"Oh, no," I groaned. "It's all right. No more climbing down red-hot ladders through belching flames! No more throwing children from——"

"Don't joke, Griggs," wailed Hawkins. "I will say I'm sorry I got you into this."

"Thank you, Hawkins," I said, nearly strangled by a cord which persisted in twisting itself about my neck. "So am I."

Conversation lagged after that. For my part, I was too dazed and too firmly enmeshed in the cords to say much.

I fancy that the same applied to Hawkins, but he happened to be facing ahead, and now and then he called back bulletins of our progress.

"Getting nearer the island," he announced after some ten minutes of the agony.

A little later: "Thank Heaven! We're almost over land!"

And still later, when I had been choked and twisted almost into insensibility by the eccentric dives of the affair and the consequent tightening of the cords, he revived me with:

"By George, Griggs, we're sinking toward land!"

I managed to look downward. Hawkins had told the truth. The wind was indeed going down, and with it the remains of the Anti-Fire-Fly.

Beneath appeared a big factory, its chimney belching forth black smoke in disregard of the Sabbath, and we seemed likely to land within its precincts.

"I knew it! I knew it!" Hawkins cried joyfully. "We're safe, after all, just as I said. We'll drop just outside the fence."

"Thank the Lord," I murmured.

"No! No! We'll drop right on that heap of dirt!" predicted Hawkins excitedly. "Yes, sir, that's where we'll drop. D'ye see that fellow wheeling a wheelbarrow toward the pile? Hey!"

The man glanced up in amazement.

"Farther down every minute!" pursued Hawkins. "I knew we'd be all right! Maybe the Anti-Fire-Fly isn't such a bad thing after all, eh?"

"Maybe not," I sighed. "But I'll take the red-hot ladder."

"Go ahead and take it," chattered the inventor. "We're not thirty feet from the ground and steering straight for that dirt-pile. Yes, sir, the wind's gone down completely. Hooray!"

"Hey, youse!" shouted the man with the wheelbarrow, somewhat excitedly.

"Well?" bawled Hawkins.

"Steer away from it!" continued the workman, waving his arms at the pile.

"We can't steer," replied Hawkins cheerfully. "But it's all right."

"The poile! The poile! Sure, we've just drew the foire, an' thim's the hot coals! Be careful o' the cinder poile!"

"What did he say?" asked Hawkins superciliously.

"'Be careful of the cinder pile,' I think."

"Oh, we won't hurt your old cinder pile!" called the inventor jocosely, as the wreck of the Anti-Fire-Fly swooped down with a rush.

"But the cinders!" howled the man. "Bedad! They're into it! Mike! Mike! Bring the hose! The hose!"

And we were into it.

A final rush of air and we struck the pile with a thud. And for my part, I had no sooner landed than I bounced to my feet with a shriek, for that cinder pile was about the hottest proposition it has ever been my misfortune to meet.

The cords were all about me, and as I pulled wildly in one direction, I could feel Hawkins pulling as wildly in the opposite.

"Let go! Let go, Griggs!" he screamed. "Come my way! Lord! I'm all afire! Come, quick!"

"I'm not going to climb back over that infernal heap!" I shouted. "You come this way!"

"But my feet! They're burning, and——"

A mighty stream of water knocked me headlong to the ground. Sizzling, steaming on the red-hot cinders, it caught Hawkins and hurled his panting person to the other side, Anti-Fire-Fly and all. Mike had arrived with the hose.

After a period of wallowing in water and mud I regained my feet.

Hawkins was already standing a little distance away, torn, scorched, drenched, black with cinders and staring wild-eyed about him.

"Why—why—Griggs," he mumbled, "what—did—we——"

"Oh, we flew away from fire with the Anti-Fire-Fly!" I said.

Such was the end of the Anti-Fire-Fly.

Attired in such of our own raiment as had survived the cinder pile and the hose, and in other bits of clothing contributed by kindly factory workmen, we took the next boat for New York, and a cab thereafter.

We reached home in time to see the ladies mounting the Hawkins' steps, presumably to investigate the reason for our prolonged inspection.

For a few moments they seemed quite incapable of speech. Mrs. Hawkins was the first to regain the use of her tongue.

"Herbert," she said in an ominously calm tone, "what was it this time?"

Hawkins smiled foolishly.

"It was the Hawkins Anti-Fire-Fly," I said spitefully. "Fly away from fire with the Anti-Fire-Fly, you know. Tell your wife about it, Hawkins."

Then Mrs. Hawkins addressed her husband and said—but let that pass.

We have all the essential facts of the case as it is. Moreover, a successful author told me last week that unhappy endings are in the worst possible taste just now.



CHAPTER VIII.

Hawkins and his wife had been just one month in their new house.

My memory on that point is particularly clear, for the Executive Committee of the Ladies' Missionary Society met at Hawkins' home the very day they moved in officially; and it had been hanging over me, more or less, that the next assembly of that body was to be held at my own residence.

Not that I am in any way unsympathetic as to church work and benighted savages and such matters; but when half a dozen women get together and discuss a few heathen and a great many hats and similar things, the solitary man in the house is apt to feel——

At any rate, when I saw Mrs. Hawkins enter my door that evening, the first of the Executive Committee to arrive, I experienced a sinking sensation for the moment. Then I secured my hat, mumbled a few excuses, and disappeared, to see how Hawkins was spending the evening.

The inventor himself answered my ring.

"Ah, Griggs," he remarked. "Committee talk you out of the house?"

"Something of the sort," I admitted.

"Glad you came in. There's something I want to—but hang up your hat."

"Hawkins," I said, closing the door, "why do you pay a large overfed English gentleman to stand around the premises if it's necessary for you to answer the bell? I'm not much on style, you know, but——"

"William? Oh, it's his night out," laughed Hawkins. "I believe the cook and the girls have gone, too, for that matter."

"Then we're altogether alone?"

"Yes," said the inventor comfortably, pushing forward one of the big library chairs for my accommodation, "all alone in the house."

"And it's a mighty nice house," I mused, gazing into the next apartment, the dining-room. "That's a splendid room, Hawkins."

"Isn't it?" smiled Hawkins, drawing back the heavy curtains rather proudly. "Most of the little wrinkles are my own ideas, too."

"That sideboard?" I asked, indicating a frail-looking but artistic bit of furniture built into the wall.

"That, too—combination of sideboard and silver-safe."

"Safe!" I laughed. "You don't keep the silver in there?"

"Why not?"

"My dear man, any one could pry that door off with a pen-knife."

"Admitted. But supposing your 'any one' to be a burglar, he'd have to get to the door before he could pry it off, would he not, Griggs?"

"Burglars do not, as a rule, find great difficulty in entering the average house," I suggested.

"Aha! That's just it—the average house!" cried the inventor. "This isn't the average house, Griggs. The burglar who tries to get into this particular house is distinctly up against it!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, sir! The crook that attempts a nocturnal entrance here has my sincere and heartfelt sympathy."

"Hawkins' Patent Automatic Burglar Alarm?" I suggested.

"What the deuce are you sneering at?" snapped the inventor. "No, there's no patent burglar alarm in this house."

"Hawkins' Steel Dynamite-Proof Shutters?"

Hawkins ignored the remark and busied himself lighting a cigar.

"Hawkins' Triple-Expansion Spring-Gun?" I hazarded once more.

"Oh, drop it! Drop it!" cried Hawkins. "Positively, Griggs, your efforts at humor disgust one. In some ways, you are as bad as a woman. Go back and sit with the Executive Committee."

"What's the connection?"

"Why, the thing I expected to show you in a few minutes is the very same one which my wife fought against for two weeks, before she let me put it into operation peacefully!" Hawkins burst out. "There's where the connection comes in between your degenerate little wits and those of the generality of women."

"If it was an invention, I don't blame your wife one little bit, Hawkins," I said. "I can see just how she must have felt about——"

"There's the evening paper, if you want to read," spat forth the inventor, poking the sheet across the library table.

Therewith he turned his back squarely upon me and settled down to a book.

It wasn't polite of Hawkins.

Indeed, after a short space the situation waxed distinctly uncomfortable; and although I am pretty well accustomed to the inventor's moods, I must admit that in another five minutes I should have cleared out had it not been for a rather unexpected happening.

Hawkins was sitting near the window—in fact, his chair brushed the hangings. As I sat gazing pensively at the back of his neck, a sudden breeze swayed the curtains above him.

There was an undue amount of swishing overhead, it seemed to me. Something near the top of the window, and concealed by the hangings, rattled distinctly; simultaneously a gong struck sharply somewhere up-stairs.

Hawkins whirled about, a most remarkable expression on his lately sullen countenance. As nearly as I could analyze it, it was a mixture of joy, excitement, and trembling expectancy.

"One!" he exclaimed.

The bell struck again.

"Two!" cried Hawkins. "By Jove! That's——"

Crash!

Out of the curtains something dropped heavily on the inventor!

For an instant it held the appearance of a grain sack, but there was something distinctly solid about it, too, for it dealt Hawkins a resounding whack upon his cranium before it rolled to the floor.

"Phew!" he gasped, sinking back into his chair caressing the bump with an unsteady hand. "That—that did startle me, Griggs!"

"I shouldn't wonder," I smiled. "What on earth did you have concealed up there?"

"Aha! You'd never guess," remarked Hawkins, his ill-humor departed.

"No, I don't believe I should," I mused, staring at the pile of canvas on the floor. "Did the painters leave it?"

"They did not," replied Hawkins coldly. "That, Griggs, is the Hawkins Crook-Trap!"

"Hawkins—Crook-Trap!" I repeated.

"That's what I said," pursued the gentleman. "Possibly—now—it may not be past your understanding to grasp why I feel so secure about that flimsy little silver-safe."

"I think I see. The burglar, presumably, comes in at the window, is knocked senseless by your trap, and next morning you find and capture him as you go down to breakfast?"

"Nothing of the sort. Look here." Hawkins picked up the affair.

As he grasped the end, the thing hung downward and showed itself to be a long canvas bag, fully large enough to contain the upper half of the average man. It was distended, too, by ribs, and appeared to be of considerable weight.

"There she is—just a bag, telescoped and hung on a frame above the window. The burglar steps in, the bag is released, drops over him, these circular steel ribs contract and clutch his arms like a vise—and there you are! How's that for an idea, Griggs?"

"Looks good," I assented.

"Moreover, the same spring which releases the ribs breaks a bottle of chloroform," continued the inventor enthusiastically. "It runs into a hood, is pressed against the burglar's nose, and two minutes later the man is stark and stiff on the floor!

"Meanwhile the annunciator bell tells me what window has been opened. I ring up the police—and it's all over with the man who tried to break in."

"It sounds all right," I admitted. "Why didn't it do all that just now?"

"Just now? Oh—you mean—just now?" stammered the inventor. "Well, it did do practically all of that, didn't it? The window wasn't opened, anyway—it was the breeze that knocked down the thing. Furthermore, the ones on this floor aren't adjusted yet—I only got them from the fellow who made them to-day.

"But up-stairs they're all fixed—chloroform and all, ready for the burglar. I tell you, Griggs, when this crook-trap of mine is on every window in New York City, there'll be a sensation in criminal circles!"

"Very likely. How much does it cost?"

"Um—well—er—well it cost me about—er—one hundred dollars a window, Griggs, but——"

"About twenty windows to the average house," I murmured. "Two thousand dollars for——"

"Well, it won't cost a tenth of that when I'm having the parts turned out in quantities," cried Hawkins, with considerable heat. "Why under the sun do you always try to throw a wet blanket over everything? Suppose it does cost two thousand dollars to equip a house with my crook-trap? If a man has ten thousand dollars' worth of silverware, he'll be willing enough to spend——"

I laughed. It wasn't meant for a nasty laugh at all—it was simply amusement at the inventor's emotionalism. But it riled Hawkins.

"Where the devil does the joke come in?" he thundered. "If I——"

"Hush!" I cried.

"I won't hush! I——"

"Two!" I counted. "Be quiet."

Hawkins calmed down on the instant.

"Was—was it the bell?" he whispered.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

The gong up-stairs had chimed six times and stopped.

I stared at Hawkins, and Hawkins at me, and the inventor's countenance went white.

Far above, the evening calm was disturbed by a stamping and threshing noise, punctuated now and then by a muffled shout.

"There!" cried the inventor. There was a wealth of satisfaction in that one word.

"Well, somebody's caught," I said.

"You bet he is!" replied Hawkins, with a nervous chuckle. "Six bells—that's the top story back—one of the servants' rooms. Somebody must have thought the house deserted and come in from the roof."

Bang! Bang! Bang! The intruder wasn't submitting to the caresses of the crook-trap without a struggle. Also, from the volume and vigor of the racket, it was painfully clear that the intruder was a robust individual.

"Well?" said Hawkins, still staring at me with a rigid smile.

"Well?"

"Well, we've got to go up there and capture him," announced the inventor, gathering himself for the task. "Come on."

"Not just yet, thank you. We'll let the chloroform get in its work first."

"But don't you want to see the thing in actual operation?"

"Hawkins, if any one could have less curiosity about anything than I have about seeing your crook-trap in operation——"

"All right, stay down here if you like. I'm going up."

"Suppose your burglar gets loose?" I argued. "Suppose he has a big, wicked revolver, and learns that you're responsible for the way he's been handled?"

Hawkins walked resolutely and silently toward the stairs. As for me, curiosity as to his fate bested my judgment. I followed.

As we neared the top of the house, the thumping and hammering grew louder and more vicious; and when we finally stood outside the door, the din was actually deafening.

"That's—that's either William's room or the cook's," said Hawkins, with a slight quaver in his tones. "He's going it, isn't he?"

"He certainly is. Let's stay here, Hawkins."

"No, sir. I'm going in to watch it. He's not loose, that's sure."

Hawkins opened the door very gently.

Inside, the room was dark—not pitch dark, but that semi-gloom of a city room whose only light comes from an arc lamp half a block away.

The air was heavy and sickening with the fumes of chloroform. They fairly sent my head a-reeling, but their effect upon the burglar seemed to have been nil.

Over by the window a huge form was hurling itself to and fro, from wall to wall and back again, in the frantic endeavor to gain freedom. The bag enveloped his head and shoulders, but a mighty pair of arms within the bag were straining and tearing at the fabric, and a couple of long, muscular legs kicked madly at everything within reach.

Every few seconds, too, a puffed oath added spice to the excitement, as the captive wrenched and strained.

On the whole, the scene was a bit too gruesome to be humorous. As a rule I can see the funny side of Hawkins' doings; but the fun departed from this particular mess at the thought of what would happen when the colossus finally emerged from the bag and commenced operations upon Hawkins and myself—neither of us athletes.

"He's caught, isn't he, Griggs?" stuttered Hawkins, clutching my arm.

"For the moment," I replied. "But come—let's get an officer. If that canvas gives——"

"Gives!" sneered the inventor. "Why that canvas——"

"Gawd! If I gets yer!" screamed the man in the bag.

"Oh, great Caesar!" gulped Hawkins. "It's—it's getting horrible, isn't it?"

"Aha! I heard yer then, ye cur!" roared the captive.

Hawkins' hand on my arm shook violently.

"We—we'll have to do something with him," he whispered. "What shall it be? We've got to subdue him, somehow or other."

"Why not let the chloroform work while we go out and get a couple of policemen?"

"Well, you see, it doesn't seem to be working, Griggs. Don't know why, but—phew! Did you hear that rip?"

I had heard it. I had also seen the silhouette of a long arm appear against the dim light of the window.

"Oh, Lord!" gasped Hawkins. "It's given somewhere! We'll have to squelch him now inside of ten seconds or—what the deuce shall I do, Griggs?"

"Take a chair and stun him," I replied. "That's all I can suggest. And personally I don't care for the job."

"Well—somebody's got to do something," groaned the inventor, seizing one of the bedroom chairs. "If ever he gets loose—say, where are you going, Griggs?"

"Just into the hall," I said. "I'm going to light the gas and watch the battle from a safe distance."

Hawkins clutched his chair and stared at me like a man in a nightmare. His expression reminded me of the day when, as a boy on the farm, I took the hatchet and started out to kill my first chicken. I felt just as Hawkins looked that evening in the dark doorway of the bedroom.

"D'ye suppose it'll kill him?" he choked. "Griggs, do you think——"

A long rip resounded from the darkness. A triumphant shout followed.

Hawkins turned swiftly, raised his chair, and darted toward the man in the bag.

There was a crash, a shout, a dull blow, and a heavy fall—and just then I managed to light the gas.

Literally, I caught my breath and rubbed my eyes. For a few seconds the scene dumfounded me past action; but shortly I hurried into the apartment and struck another light.

Hawkins was stretched upon the floor groaning. His entire face seemed to have suffered violent impact with some unyielding body, and both hands covered his nose, from which the life-blood flowed freely.

And across the room, sitting against the wall, his large person decorated by sundry steel hoops and shreds of canvas, sat—William, the Hawkins' butler, staring dazedly into space!

Between them lay the chair.

"Oh, Griggs, Griggs, Griggs!" moaned the inventor. "Come quick! Get my wife! I'm done for this time! He's finished me!"

"Hawkins!" I cried, shaking him. "Did he——"

"Never mind him—let him escape," replied Hawkins, faintly. "Just get my wife before I go. Good-by, old friend, good-by."

"Mr.—'Awkins!" gasped the butler, his senses returning.

"What!" shrilled the inventor, sitting bolt upright, black eyes, swelled face, and all completely forgotten. "Is that you, William?"

"Yes, sir," stammered the man. "Was—was it you I hit, sir?"

"Was it!" yelled Hawkins, struggling to his feet. "Look at this face! What the deuce did you mean by it?"

"Beg—beg pardon, sir, but did you—did you sorter strike me with a chair, sir?"

"I—well, yes, William, I did."

"Well, I, not knowing of course as it was you, sir, I sorter hit back. But have you got the thief, sir?"

"The what?"

"Indeed, yes, sir. There's one in the house. I was attacked here—right in this here very room. See here, sir, this bag! Just as I opened the window, he kem behind me, sir, threw it over my head, and tried to chloroform me, sir—you can smell it, sir."

"Yes. All right," said Hawkins, briefly, with what must have seemed to the man a strange lack of interest.

"You see, sir, whoever the rascal was, he must 'a' known as I intended going out this evening, sir, and that the house would be empty like. So in he sneaks from the roof, bag and all, and waits. And when I kem up the stairs, instead of going out, sir——"

"All right. That'll do. I understand," muttered Hawkins. "No one threw a bag over you. It was a new—er—sort of burglar alarm—just had it put up to-day."

"Burglar alarm!" cried the butler, staring at the remnants from which he was slowly extricating himself.

"Yes!" snapped Hawkins. "And don't stand there mumbling over it, William!"

"Yes, sir."

"Here," said the inventor, "is a—er—twenty-dollar note. You will immediately forget everything that has happened within the last half hour."

"Yes, sir," responded the butler, with a wide smile.

Hawkins led the way down-stairs. In the bathroom he paused to lave his much abused features; and by the time he had finished, my own features had had a chance to regain something like composure.

Once more in the library, which we had deserted some twenty minutes before, Hawkins threw himself rather limply into a chair.

"Well, well, well!" he muttered. "Now, who under the sun could have foreseen that?"

I forebore remarks.

"William ought to be in the prize-ring," continued the inventor sadly. "But he's a bright chap. He'll keep his mouth shut. Lucky—er—nobody else was in the house, wasn't it?"

"How are you going to account to Mrs. Hawkins for those black eyes?"

"Oh—we can say that we were boxing and you hit me. That's easy."

"She'll believe that, too, Hawkins," I said, gazing at the battered countenance. "You look more as if you'd had a collision with an express train."

"Oh, she'll believe it, all right," said the inventor cheerily. "For once—just for once, Griggs—something has happened which my better half won't be on to. You'll see I'm right. There isn't a clue."

"Well, perhaps," I sighed.

"And now let's have some of that old Scotch. I feel a little weak."

We loitered into the next apartment—the dining-room. We turned our footsteps toward the sideboard. We stopped—both of us—as if transformed to stone.

The door was off the silver-safe. The drawers lay about the floor. And the little safe itself was as empty as the day it left the cabinet-maker!

"D-d-d'you see it, too?" cried Hawkins in a scared, husky voice.

"Yes," I replied, stooping to look into the safe. "It must have been a sneak-thief, Hawkins. Every vestige of your beautiful service is gone!"

The inventor glared long at the wreck.

"And now that's got to be explained," he muttered at last, continuing his journey to the sideboard. "How can I get around it?"

He poured out a generous dose of the Scotch, imbibed it at a swallow, and shuffled drearily back to the library, where he dropped once more into a chair and stared through fast-swelling eyes at the glazed tile fire-place.

And I? Well, just then I heard Mrs. Hawkins' step on the vestibule flooring without; she had returned for the minutes of the last meeting.

The bell rang. I walked quickly upstairs to call up the police and notify them. It wasn't my place to answer that bell, with William in the house.



CHAPTER IX.

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.



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!"



CHAPTER X.

"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—a success? 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.



CHAPTER XI.

I may have mentioned that it was customary for Hawkins and myself to travel down-town together on the elevated six days in the week.

So far as that goes, we still do so; for it has come over me recently that any attempt to dodge the demoniac inventions of Hawkins is about as thankless and hopeless a task as seeking to avoid the setting of the sun.

For two or three mornings, however, I had been leaving the house some ten or fifteen minutes earlier than usual.

There had lately appeared the old, uncanny light in Hawkins' eye; and if trouble were impending, it was my fond, foolish hope to be out of its way—until such time, at least, as the police or the coroner should call me up on the telephone to identify all that was mortal of Hawkins.

Three days, then, my strategy had been crowned with success. I had eluded Hawkins and ridden down alone, the serene enjoyment of my paper unpunctuated by dissertations upon the practicability of condensing the clouds for commercial purposes, or the utilization of atmospheric nitrogen in the manufacture of predigested breakfast food.

But upon the fourth morning a fuse blew out under the car before we left the station; and as I sat there fussing about the delay, in walked Hawkins.

He was beaming and cheerful, but the glitter in his eye had grown more intense.

"Ah, Griggs," he exclaimed, "I've missed you lately!"

"I hope you haven't lost weight over it?"

"Well, no. I've been busy—very busy."

"Rush of business?"

"Um—ah—yes. Griggs!"

It was coming!

"Hawkins," I said hurriedly, "have you followed this matter of the Panama Canal?"

Hawkins stared hard at me for a moment; then I gave him another push, and he toppled into the canal and wallowed about in its waters until the ride was over.

Unhappily, my own place of business is located farther down upon the same street with the Blank Building, where Hawkins has—or had—offices. There was no way of avoiding it—I was forced to walk with him.

But the suppressed enthusiasm in Hawkins didn't come out, and I felt rather more easy. Whatever it was, I fancied that he had left the material part of it at home, and home lay many blocks up-town. I was safe.

"Good-by," I smiled when we reached his entrance.

"Not much," Hawkins responded. "Come in."

"But, my dear fellow——"

"You come," commanded the inventor. "There's something in here I want you to see."

He led me in and past the line of elevators.

So we were not going up to his offices! We seemed to be heading for the cigar booth, and for a moment I fancied that Hawkins had discovered a new brand and was going to treat me; but he piloted me farther, to a door, and opened it and we passed through.

Then I perceived where we were. The Blank Building people had been constructing an addition to their immense stack of offices; we stood in the freshly completed and wholly unoccupied annex.

"There, sir!" said Hawkins, extending his forefinger. "What do you see, Griggs?"

"Six empty barrels, about three wagon-loads of kindling wood, a new tiled floor, and six brand-new elevators," I replied.

"Oh, hang those things! Look—where I'm pointing!"

"Ah! somebody's left a packing-box in one of the elevator-shafts, eh?"

Certainly, more than anything else, that was what it resembled.

At the first glance it appeared to be nothing more than a crude wooden case about the size of an elevator car, standing in one of the shafts and contrasting unpleasantly with the other new, shining polished cars.

"Packing—ugh!" snapped the inventor "Do you know what that is?"

"You turned down my first guess," I suggested humbly.

"Griggs, what appears to you as a packing-box is nothing more nor less than the first and only Hawkins Hydro-Vapor Lift!"

"The which?"

"The—Hawkins—Hydro—Vapor—Lift!"

"Hydro-Vapor?" I murmured. "Whatever is that? Steam?"

"Certainly."

"And lift, I presume, is English for elevator?"

"The words are synonymous," said Hawkins coldly.

"Then why the dickens didn't you call it a steam elevator and be done with it? Wasn't that sufficiently complicated?"

"Oh, Griggs, you never seem able to understand! Now, a steam elevator—so called—is an old proposition. A Hydro-Vapor Lift is entirely new and sounds distinctive!"

"Yes, it sounds queer enough," I admitted.

"Just examine it," said the inventor joyously, leading me to the box.

There was not much to be examined. Four walls, a ceiling and a floor—all of undressed wood—that was about the extent of the affair; but in the center of the floor lay a great circular iron plate, some two feet across and festooned near the edge with a circle of highly unornamental iron bolt heads.

Beside the plate, a lever rising perpendicularly from the floor constituted the sole furnishing of the car.

"Now, you've seen a hydraulic elevator?" Hawkins began. "You know how they work—a big steel shaft pushed up the car from underneath, so that when it is in operation the car is simply a box standing on the end of a pole, which rises or sinks, as the operator wills."

"I believe so," I assented. "I think it's time now for me to be go——"

"That principle is fallacious!" the inventor exclaimed. "Consider what it would mean here—a steel shaft sixteen stories high, weighing tons and tons!"

"Well?"

"Well, sir, I have reversed that idiotic idea!" Hawkins announced triumphantly. "I have had a hole dug sixteen stories deep, and put the steel shaft down into it."

It was about what one might have expected from Hawkins; but despite my long acquaintance with his bizarre mental machinery, I stood and gasped in sheer amazement.

"Now, then," pursued the inventor. "I have had a steel tube made, a little longer than the shaft, you understand."

"What! Even longer than sixteen stories?"

"Of course. The tube fits the shaft exactly, just as an engine cylinder fits the plunger. The elevator stands upon the upper end of the tube. We let steam into the tube by operating this lever, which controls my patent, reversible steam-release. What happens? Why, the tube is forced upward and the elevator rises. I let out some of the steam—and the tube sinks down into the ground! That iron plate which you see is the manhole cover of the tube, as it were—it corresponds, of course, to the cylinder-head on an engine."

As the novelist puts it, I stood aghast.

It overwhelmed me utterly—the idea that in a great, sane city like New York an irresponsible maniac could be permitted to dig a hole sixteen stories deep under a new office building and then fill up that hole with a shaft and a tube such as Hawkins had just described.

"And the people who own this place—did they allow you to do it, or have you been chloroforming the watchman and working at night?" I inquired.

"Don't be absurd, Griggs," said Hawkins. "I pay a big rent here. The owners were very nice about it."

They must have been—exceedingly so, I thought; nice to the point of imbecility. Had they known Hawkins as I know him, they would joyfully have handed him back his lease, given him a substantial cash bonus to boot, and even have thrown in a non-transferable Cook's Tour ticket to Timbuctoo before they allowed him to embark on the project.

It would have been a low sort of trick upon Timbuctoo, but it would have saved them money and trouble.

"Well," Hawkins said sharply, breaking in upon my reverie. "Don't stand there mooning. Did you ever see anything like it before?"

"Once, when I was a child," I confessed, "I fell while climbing a flagpole, and that night I dreamed——"

"Bah! Come along and watch her work."

"No!" I protested. "Oh, no!"

"Good Lord, why not?" cried Hawkins.

"My wife," I murmured. "She cannot spare me, Hawkins, you know—not yet."

"Why, there isn't the slightest element of danger," the inventor argued. "Surely, Griggs, even you must be able to grasp that. Can't you see that that is the chief beauty of the Hydro-Vapor Lift? There are no cables to break! That's the great feature. This car may be loaded with ton after ton; but if she's overloaded, she simply stops. There are no risky wire-ropes to snap and let down the whole affair."