The sixty stories of the perfectly constructed Colossus building
had mysteriously crashed! What was the connection between this
catastrophe and the weird strains of the Mad Musician's violin?
the proud Colossus Building, which a few minutes before had reared its
sixty stories of artistic architecture towards the blue dome of the sky,
crashed in a rugged, dusty heap of stone, brick, cement and mortar. The
steel framework, like the skeleton of some prehistoric monster, still
reared to dizzy heights but in a bent and twisted shape of grotesque
outline.
No one knew how many lives were snuffed out in the avalanche.
As the collapse occurred in the early dawn it was not believed the
death list would be large. It was admitted, however, that autos, cabs
and surface cars may have been caught under the falling rock. One train
was known to have been wrecked in the subway due to a cave-in from the
surface under the ragged mountain of debris.
The litter fairly filled a part of Times Square, the most congested
cross-roads on God's footstool. Straggling brick and rock had rolled
across the street to the west and had crashed into windows and doors of
innocent small tradesmen's shops.
A few minutes after the crash a mad crowd of people had piled from
subway exits as far away as Penn Station and Columbus Circle and from
cross streets. These milled about, gesticulating and shouting
hysterically. All neighboring police stations were hard put to handle
the growing mob.
Hundreds of dead and maimed were being carried to the surface from the
wrecked train in the subway. Trucks and cabs joined the ambulance crews
in the work of transporting these to morgues and hospitals. As the
morning grew older and the news of the disaster spread, more milling
thousands tried to crowd into the square. Many were craning necks
hopelessly on the outskirts of the throng, blocks away, trying vainly to
get a view of what lay beyond.
The fire department and finally several companies of militia joined the
police in handling the crowd. Newsies, never asleep, yowled their
"Wuxtras" and made much small money.
The newspapers devoted solid pages in attempting to describe what had
happened. Nervously, efficient reporters had written and written, using
all their best adjectives and inventing new ones in attempts to picture
the crash and the hysterics which followed.
* * * * *
When the excitement was at its height a middle-aged man, bleeding at the
head, clothes torn and dusty, staggered into the West 47th street
police station. He found a lone sergeant at the desk.
The police sergeant jumped to his feet as the bedraggled man entered and
stumbled to a bench.
"I'm Pat Brennan, street floor watchman of the Colossus," he said. "I
ran for it. I got caught in the edge of the wreck and a brick clipped
me. I musta been out for some time. When I came around I looked back
just once at the wreck and then I beat it over here. Phone my boss."
"I'll let you phone your boss," said the sergeant, "but first tell me
just what happened."
"Earthquake, I guess. I saw the floor heaving in waves. Glass was
crashing and falling into the street. All windows in the arcade buckled,
either in or out. I ran into the street and looked up. God, what a
sight! The building from sidewalk to towers was rocking and waving and
twisting and buckling and I saw it was bound to crumple, so I lit out
and ran. I heard a roar like all Hell broke loose and then something
nicked me and my light went out."
"How many got caught in the building?"
"Nobody got out but me, I guess. There weren't many tenants. The
building is all rented, but not everybody had moved in yet and those as
had didn't spend their nights there. There was a watchman for every five
stories. An engineer and his crew. Three elevator operators had come in.
There was no names of tenants in or out on my book after 4 A.M. The
crash musta come about 6. That's all."
* * * * *
Throughout the country the news of the crash was received with great
interest and wonderment, but in one small circle it caused absolute
consternation. That was in the offices of the Muller Construction
Company, the builders of the Colossus. Jason V. Linane, chief engineer
of the company, was in conference with its president, James J. Muller.
Muller sat with his head in his hands, and his face wore an expression
of a man in absolute anguish. Linane was pacing the floor, a wild
expression in his eyes, and at times he muttered and mumbled under his
breath.
In the other offices the entire force from manager to office boys was
hushed and awed, for they had seen the expressions on the faces of the
heads of the concern when they stalked into the inner office that
morning.
Muller finally looked up, rather hopelessly, at Linane.
"Unless we can prove that the crash was due to some circumstance over
which we had no control, we are ruined," he said, and there actually
were tears in his eyes.
"No doubt about that," agreed Linane, "but I can swear that the Colossus
went up according to specifications and that every ounce and splinter of
material was of the best. The workmanship was faultless. We have built
scores of the biggest blocks in the world and of them all this Colossus
was the most perfect. I had prided myself on it. Muller, it was
perfection. I simply cannot account for it. I cannot. It should have
stood up for thousands of years. The foundation was solid rock. It
positively was not an earthquake. No other building in the section was
even jarred. No other earthquake was ever localized to one half block of
the earth's crust, and we can positively eliminate an earthquake or an
explosion as the possible cause. I am sure we are not to blame, but we
will have to find the exact cause."
"If there was some flaw?" questioned Muller, although he knew the
answer.
"If there was some flaw, then we're sunk. The newspapers are already
clamoring for probes, of us, of the building, of the owners and
everybody and everything. We have got to have something damned plausible
when we go to bat on this proposition or every dollar we have in the
world will have to be paid out."
"That is not all," said Muller: "not only will we be penniless, but we
may have to go to jail and we will never be able to show our faces in
reputable business circles again. Who was the last to go over that
building?"
"I sent Teddy Jenks. He is a cub and is swell headed and too big for his
pants, but I would bank my life on his judgment. He has the judgment of
a much older man and I would also bank my life and reputation on his
engineering skill and knowledge. He pronounced the building positively
O.K.--100 per cent."
"Where is Jenks?"
"He will be here as soon as his car can drive down from Tarrytown. He
should be here now."
* * * * *
As they talked Jenks, the youngest member of the engineering force,
entered. He entered like a whirlwind. He threw his hat on the floor and
drew out a drawer of a cabinet. He pulled out the plans for the
Colossus, big blue prints, some of them yards in extent, and threw them
on the floor. Then he dropped to his knees and began poring over them.
"This is a hell of a time for you to begin getting around," exploded
Muller. "What were you doing, cabareting all night?"
"It sure is terrible--awful," said Jenks, half to himself.
"Answer me," thundered Muller.
"Oh yes," said Jenks, looking up. He saw the look of anguish on his
boss's face and forgot his own excitement in sympathy. He jumped to his
feet, placed his arm about the shoulders of the older man and led him to
a chair. Linane only scowled at the young man.
"I was delayed because I stopped by to see the wreck. My God, Mr.
Muller, it is awful." Jenks drew his hand across his eye as if to erase
the scene of the wrecked building. Then patting the older man
affectionately on the back he said:
"Buck up. I'm on the job, as usual. I'll find out about it. It could not
have been our fault. Why man, that building was as strong as Gibraltar
itself!"
"You were the last to inspect it," accused Muller, with a break in his
voice.
"Nobody knows that better than I, and I can swear by all that's square
and honest that it was no fault of the material or the construction. It
must have been--"
"Must have been what?"
"I'll be damned if I know."
"That's like him," said Linane, who, while really kindly intentioned,
had always rather enjoyed prodding the young engineer.
"Like me, like the devil," shouted Jenks, glaring at Linane. "I suppose
you know all about it, you're so blamed wise."
"No, I don't know," admitted Linane. "But I do know that you don't like
me to tell you anything. Nevertheless, I am going to tell you that you
had better get busy and find out what caused it, or--"
"That's just what I'm doing," said Jenks, and he dived for his plans on
the floor.
Newspaper reporters, many of them, were fighting outside to get in.
Muller looked at Linane when a stenographer had announced the reporters
for the tenth time.
"We had better let them in," he said, "it looks bad to crawl for cover."
"What are you going to tell them?" asked Linane.
"God only knows," said Muller.
"Let me handle them," said Jenks, looking up confidently.
* * * * *
The newspapermen had rushed the office. They came in like a wild wave.
Questions flew like feathers at a cock-fight.
Muller held up his hand and there was something in his grief-stricken
eyes that held the gentlemen of the press in silence. They had time to
look around. They saw the handsome, dark-haired, brown-eyed Jenks poring
over the plans. Dust from the carpet smudged his knees, and he had
rubbed some of it over a sweating forehead, but he still looked the
picture of self-confident efficiency.
"Gentlemen," said Muller slowly, "I can answer all your questions at
once. Our firm is one of the oldest and staunchest in the trade. Our
buildings stand as monuments to our integrity--"
"All but one," said a young Irishman.
"You are right. All but one," confessed Muller. "But that one, believe
me, has been visited by an act of God. Some form of earthquake or some
unlooked for, uncontrolled, almost unbelievable catastrophe has
happened. The Muller company stands back of its work to its last dollar.
Gentlemen, you know as much as we do. Mr. Jenks there, whose reputation
as an engineer is quite sturdy, I assure you, was the last to inspect
the building. He passed upon it when it was finished. He is at your
service."
Jenks arose, brushed some dust from his knees.
"You look like you'd been praying," bandied the Irishman.
"Maybe I have. Now let me talk. Don't broadside me with questions. I
know what you want to know. Let me talk."
The newspapermen were silent.
"There has been talk of probing this disaster, naturally," began Jenks.
"You all know, gentlemen, that we will aid any inquiry to our utmost.
You want to know what we have to say about it--who is responsible. In a
reasonable time I will have a statement to make that will be startling
in the extreme. I am not sure of my ground now."
"How about the ground under the Colossus?" said the Irishman.
"Don't let's kid each other," pleaded Jenks. "Look at Mr. Muller: it is
as if he had lost his whole family. We are good people. I am doing all I
can. Mr. Linane, who had charge of the construction, is doing all he
can. We believe we are blameless. If it is proven otherwise we will
acknowledge our fault, assume financial responsibility, and take our
medicine. Believe me, that building was perfection plus, like all our
buildings. That covers the entire situation."
Hundreds of questions were parried and answered by the three engineers,
and the reporters left convinced that if the Muller Construction Company
was responsible, it was not through any fault of its own.
* * * * *
The fact that Jenks and Linane were not strong for each other, except to
recognize each other's ability as engineers, was due to an incident of
the past. This incident had caused a ripple of mirth in engineering
circles when it happened, and the laugh was on the older man, Linane.
It was when radio was new. Linane, a structural engineer, had paid
little attention to radio. Jenks was the kind of an engineer who dabbled
in all sciences. He knew his radio.
When Jenks first came to work with a technical sheepskin and a few tons
of brass, Linane accorded him only passing notice. Jenks craved the
plaudits of the older man and his palship. Linane treated him as a son,
but did not warm to his social advances.
"I'm as good an engineer as he is," mused Jenks, "and if he is going to
high-hat me, I'll just put a swift one over on him and compel his
notice."
The next day Jenks approached Linane in conference and said:
"I've got a curious bet on, Mr. Linane. I am betting sound can travel a
mile quicker than it travels a quarter of a mile."
"What?" said Linane.
"I'm betting fifty that sound can travel a mile quicker than it can
travel a quarter of a mile."
"Oh no--it can't," insisted Linane.
"Oh yes--it can!" decided Jenks.
"I'll take some of that fool money myself," said Linane.
"How much?" asked Jenks.
"As much as you want."
"All right--five hundred dollars."
"How you going to prove your contention?"
"By stop watches, and your men can hold the watches. We'll bet that a
pistol shot can be heard two miles away quicker than it can be heard a
quarter of a mile away."
"Sound travels about a fifth of a mile a second. The rate varies
slightly according to temperature," explained Linane. "At the freezing
point the rate is 1,090 feet per second and increases a little over one
foot for every degree Fahrenheit."
"Hot or cold," breezed Jenks, "I am betting you five hundred dollars
that sound can travel two miles quicker than a quarter-mile."
"You're on, you damned idiot!" shouted the completely exasperated
Linane.
* * * * *
Jenks let Linane's friends hold the watches and his friend held the
money. Jenks was to fire the shot.
Jenks fired the shot in front of a microphone on a football field. One
of Linane's friends picked the sound up instantaneously on a three-tube
radio set two miles away. The other watch holder was standing in the
open a quarter of a mile away and his watch showed a second and a
fraction.
All hands agreed that Jenks had won the bet fairly. Linane never exactly
liked Jenks after that.
Then Jenks rather aggravated matters by a habit. Whenever Linane would
make a very positive statement Jenks would look owl-eyed and say: "Mr.
Linane, I'll have to sound you out about that." The heavy accent on the
word "sound" nettled Linane somewhat.
Linane never completely forgave Jenks for putting over this "fast one."
Socially they were always more or less at loggerheads, but neither let
this feeling interfere with their work. They worked together faithfully
enough and each recognized the ability of the other.
And so it was that Linane and Jenks, their heads together, worked all
night in an attempt to find some cause that would tie responsibility
for the disaster on mother nature.
They failed to find it and, sleepy-eyed, they were forced to admit
failure, so far.
The newspapers, to whom Muller had said that he would not shirk any
responsibility, began a hue and cry for the arrest of all parties in any
way concerned with the direction of the building of the Colossus.
When the death list from the crash and subway wreck reached 97, the
press waxed nasty and demanded the arrest of Muller, Linane and Jenks in
no uncertain tones.
Half dead from lack of sleep, the three men were taken by the police to
the district attorney's offices and, after a strenuous grilling, were
formally placed under arrest on charges of criminal negligence. They put
up a $50,000 bond in each case and were permitted to go and seek further
to find the cause of what the newspapers now began calling the "Colossal
Failure."
Several days were spent by Linane and Jenks in examining the wreckage
which was being removed from Times Square, truckload after truckload, to
a point outside the city. Here it was again sorted and examined and
piled for future disposal.
So far as could be found every brick, stone and ounce of material used
in the building was perfect. Attorneys, however, assured Linane, Jenks
and Muller that they would have to find the real cause of the disaster
if they were to escape possible long prison sentences.
Night after night Jenks courted sleep, but it would not come. He began
to grow wan and haggard.
* * * * *
Jenks took to walking the streets at night, mile after mile, thinking,
always thinking, and searching his mind for a solution of the mystery.
It was evening. He had walked past the scene of the Colossus crash
several times. He found himself on a side street. He looked up and saw
in electric lights:
TOWN HALL
Munsterbergen, the Mad Musician
Concert Here To-night.
He took five dollars from his pocket and bought a ticket. He entered
with the crowd and was ushered to a seat. He looked neither to the right
or left. His eyes were sunken, his face lined with worry.
Something within Jenks caused him to turn slightly. He was curiously
aware of a beautiful girl who sat beside him. She had a mass of golden
hair which seemed to defy control. It was wild, positively tempestuous.
Her eyes were deep blue and her skin as white as fleecy clouds in
spring. He was dimly conscious that those glorious eyes were troubled.
She glanced at him. She was aware that he was suffering. A great surge
of sympathy welled in her heart. She could not explain the feeling.
A great red plush curtain parted in the center and drew in graceful
folds to the edges of the proscenium. A small stage was revealed.
A tousle-headed man with glaring, beady black eyes, dressed in black
evening clothes stepped forward and bowed. Under his arm was a violin.
He brought the violin forward. His nose, like the beak of some great
bird, bobbed up and down in acknowledgment of the plaudits which greeted
him. His long nervous fingers began to caress the instrument and his
lips began to move.
Jenks was aware that he was saying something, but was not at all
interested. What he said was this:
"Maybe, yes, I couldn't talk so good English, but you could understood
it, yes? Und now I tell you dot I never play the compositions of any
man. I axtemporize exgloosively. I chust blay und blay, und maybe you
should listen, yes? If I bleeze you I am chust happy."
Jenks' attention was drawn to him. He noted his wild appearance.
"He sure looks mad enough," mused Jenks.
* * * * *
The violinist flipped the fiddle up under his chin. He drew the bow over
the strings and began a gentle melody that reminded one of rain drops
falling on calm waters.
Jenks forgot his troubles. He forgot everything. He slumped in his seat
and his eyes closed. The rain continued falling from the strings of the
violin.
Suddenly the melody changed to a glad little lilting measure, as sweet
as love itself. The sun was coming out again and the birds began to
sing. There was the trill of a canary with the sun on its cage. There
was the song of the thrush, the mocking-bird and the meadow lark. These
blended finally into a melodious burst of chirping melody which seemed a
chorus of the wild birds of the forest and glen. Then the lilting love
measure again. It tore at the heart strings, and brought tears to one's
eyes.
Unconsciously the girl next to Jenks leaned towards him. Involuntarily
he leaned to meet her. Their shoulders touched. The cloud of her golden
hair came to rest against his dark locks. Their hands found each other
with gentle pressure. Both were lost to the world.
Abruptly the music changed. There was a succession of broken treble
notes that sounded like the crackling of flames. Moans deep and
melancholy followed. These grew more strident and prolonged, giving
place to abject howls, suggesting the lamentations of the damned.
The hands of the boy and girl gripped tensely. They could not help
shuddering.
The violin began to produce notes of a leering, jeering character,
growing more horrible with each measure until they burst in a loud
guffaw of maniacal laughter.
The whole performance was as if someone had taken a heaven and plunged
it into a hell.
The musician bowed jerkily, and was gone.
* * * * *
There was no applause, only wild exclamations. Half the house was on its
feet. The other half sat as if glued to chairs.
The boy and the girl were standing, their hands still gripping tensely.
"Come, let's get out of here," said Jenks. The girl took her wrap and
Jenks helped her into it. Hand in hand they fled the place.
In the lobby their eyes met, and for the first time they realized they
were strangers. Yet deep in their hearts was a feeling that their fates
had been sealed.
"My goodness!" burst from the girl.
"It can't be helped now," said Jenks decisively.
"What can't be helped?" asked the girl, although she knew in her heart.
"Nothing can be helped," said Jenks. Then he added: "We should know each
other by this time. We have been holding hands for an hour."
The girl's eyes flared. "You have no right to presume on that
situation," she said.
Jenks could have kicked himself. "Forgive me," he said. "It was only
that I just wanted so to know you. Won't you let me see you home?"
"You may," said the girl simply, and she led the way to her own car.
They drove north.
Their bodies seemed like magnets. They were again shoulder to shoulder,
holding hands.
"Will you tell me your name?" pleaded Jenks.
"Surely," replied the girl. "I am Elaine Linane."
"What?" exploded Jenks. "Why, I work with a Linane, an engineer with the
Muller Construction Company."
"He is my father," she said.
"Why, we are great friends," said the boy. "I am Jenks, his
assistant--at least we work together."
"Yes, I have heard of you," said the girl. "It is strange, the way we
met. My father admires your work, but I am afraid you are not great
friends." The girl had forgotten her troubles. She chuckled. She had
heard the way Jenks had "sounded" her father out.
Jenks was speechless. The girl continued:
"I don't know whether to like you or to hate you. My father is an old
dear. You were cruel to him."
Jenks was abject. "I did not mean to be," he said. "He rather belittled
me without realizing it. I had to make my stand. The difference in our
years made him take me rather too lightly. I had to compel his notice,
if I was to advance."
"Oh!" said the girl.
"I am sorry--so sorry."
"You might not have been altogether at fault," said the girl. "Father
forgets at times that I have grown up. I resent being treated like a
child, but he is the soul of goodness and fatherly care."
"I know that," said Jenks.
* * * * *
Every engineer knows his mathematics. It was this fact, coupled with
what the world calls a "lucky break," that solved the Colossus mystery.
Nobody can get around the fact that two and two make four.
Jenks had happened on accomplishment to advance in the engineering
profession, and it was well for him that he had reached a crisis. He had
never believed in luck or in hunches, so it was good for him to be
brought face to face with the fact that sometimes the footsteps of man
are guided. It made him begin to look into the engineering of the
universe, to think more deeply, and to acknowledge a Higher Power.
With Linane he had butted into a stone wall. They were coming to know
what real trouble meant. The fact that they were innocent did not make
the steel bars of a cage any more attractive. Their troubles began to
wrap about them with the clammy intimacy of a shroud. Then came the
lucky break.
Next to his troubles, Jenks' favorite topic was the Mad Musician. He
tried to learn all he could about this uncanny character at whose
concert he had met the girl of his life. He learned two facts that made
him perk up and think.
One was that the Mad Musician had had offices and a studio in the
Colossus and was one of the first to move in. The other was that the Mad
Musician took great delight in shattering glassware with notes of or
vibrations from a violin. Nearly everyone knows that a glass tumbler can
be shattered by the proper note sounded on a violin. The Mad Musician
took delight in this trick. Jenks courted his acquaintance, and saw him
shatter a row of glasses of different sizes by sounding different notes
on his fiddle. The glasses crashed one after another like gelatine balls
hit by the bullets of an expert rifleman.
Then Jenks, the engineer who knew his mathematics, put two and two
together. It made four, of course.
"Listen, Linane," he said to his co-worker: "this fiddler is crazier
than a flock of cuckoos. If he can crack crockery with violin sound
vibrations, is it not possible, by carrying the vibrations to a much
higher power, that he could crack a pile of stone, steel, brick and
cement, like the Colossus?"
"Possible, but hardly probable. Still," Linane mused, "when you think
about it, and put two and two together.... Let's go after him and see
what he is doing now."
Both jumped for their coats and hats. As they fared forth, Jenks cinched
his argument:
"If a madman takes delight in breaking glassware with a vibratory wave
or vibration, how much more of a thrill would he get by crashing a
mountain?"
"Wild, but unanswerable," said Linane.
* * * * *
Jenks had been calling on the Mad Musician at his country place. "He had
a studio in the Colossus," he reminded Linane. "He must have re-opened
somewhere else in town. I wonder where."
"Musicians are great union men," said Linane. "Phone the union."
Teddy Jenks did, but the union gave the last known town address as the
Colossus.
"He would remain in the same district around Times Square," reasoned
Jenks. "Let's page out the big buildings and see if he is not preparing
to crash another one."
"Fair enough," said Linane, who was too busy with the problem at hand to
choose his words.
Together the engineers started a canvass of the big buildings in the
theatrical district. After four or five had been searched without result
they entered the 30-story Acme Theater building.
Here they learned that the Mad Musician had leased a four-room suite
just a few days before. This suite was on the fifteenth floor, just half
way up in the big structure.
They went to the manager of the building and frankly stated their
suspicions. "We want to enter that suite when the tenant is not there,"
they explained, "and we want him forestalled from entering while we are
examining the premises."
"Hadn't we better notify the police?" asked the building manager, who
had broken out in a sweat when he heard the dire disaster which might be
in store for the stately Acme building.
"Not yet," said Linane. "You see, we are not sure: we have just been
putting two and two together."
"We'll get the building detective, anyway," insisted the manager.
"Let him come along, but do not let him know until we are sure. If we
are right we will find a most unusual infernal machine," said Linane.
* * * * *
The three men entered the suite with a pass-key. The detective was left
outside in the hall to halt anyone who might disturb the searchers. It
was as Jenks had thought. In an inner room they found a diabolical
machine--a single string stretched across two bridges, one of brass and
one of wood. A big horsehair bow attached to a shaft operated by a motor
was automatically sawing across the string. The note resulting was
evidently higher than the range of the human ear, because no audible
sound resulted. It was later estimated that the destructive note was
several octaves higher than the highest note on a piano.
The entire machine was enclosed in a heavy wire-net cage, securely
bolted to the floor. Neither the string or bow could be reached. It was
evidently the Mad Musician's idea that the devilish contrivance should
not be reached by hands other than his own.
How long the infernal machine had been operating no one knew, but the
visitors were startled when the building suddenly began to sway
perceptibly. Jenks jumped forward to stop the machine but could not find
a switch.
"See if the machine plugs in anywhere in a wall socket!" he shouted to
Linane, who promptly began examining the walls. Jenks shouted to the
building manager to phone the police to clear the streets around the big
building.
"Tell the police that the Acme Theater building may crash at any
moment," he instructed.
The engineers were perfectly cool in face of the great peril, but the
building manager lost his head completely and began to run around in
circles muttering: "Oh, my God, save me!" and other words of
supplication that blended into an incoherent babel.
Jenks rushed to the man, trying to still his wild hysteria.
The building continued to sway dangerously.
* * * * *
Jenks looked from a window. An enormous crowd was collecting, watching
the big building swinging a foot out of plumb like a giant pendulum. The
crowd was growing. Should the building fall the loss of life would be
appalling. It was mid-morning. The interior of the building teemed with
thousands of workers, for all floors above the third were offices.
Teddy Jenks turned suddenly. He heard the watchman in the hall scream in
terror. Then he heard a body fall. He rushed to the door to see the Mad
Musician standing over the prostrate form of the detective, a devilish
grin on his distorted countenance.
The madman turned, saw Jenks, and started to run. Jenks took after him.
Up the staircase the madman rushed toward the roof. Teddy followed him
two floors and then rushed out to take the elevators. The building in
its mad swaying had made it impossible for the lifts to be operated.
Teddy realized this with a distraught gulp in his throat. He returned to
the stairway and took up the pursuit of the madman.
The corridors were beginning to fill with screaming men and wailing
girls. It was a sight never to be forgotten.
Laboriously Jenks climbed story after story without getting sight of the
madman. Finally he reached the roof. It was waving like swells on a lake
before a breeze. He caught sight of the Mad Musician standing on the
street wall, thirty stories from the street, a leer on his devilish
visage. He jumped for him.
The madman grasped him and lifted him up to the top of the wall as a cat
might have lifted a mouse. Both men were breathing heavily as a result
of their 15-story climb.
The madman tried to throw Teddy Jenks to the street below. Teddy clung
to him. The two battled desperately as the building swayed.
The dense crowd in the street had caught sight of the two men fighting
on the narrow coping, and the shout which rent the air reached the ears
of Jenks.
* * * * *
The mind of the engineer was still working clearly, but a wild fear
gripped his heart. His strength seemed to be leaving him. The madman
pushed him back, bending his spine with brute strength. Teddy was forced
to the narrow ledge that had given the two men footing. The fingers of
the madman gripped his throat.
He was dimly conscious that the swaying of the building was slowing
down. His reason told him that Linane had found the wall socket and had
stopped the sawing of the devil's bow on the engine of hell.
He saw the madman draw a big knife. With his last remaining strength he
reached out and grasped the wrist above the hand which held the weapon.
In spite of all he could do he saw the madman inching the knife nearer
and nearer his throat.
Grim death was peering into the bulging eyes of Teddy Jenks, when his
engineering knowledge came to his rescue. He remembered the top stories
of the Acme building were constructed with a step of ten feet in from
the street line, for every story of construction above the 24th floor.
"If we fall," he reasoned, "we can only fall one story." Then he
deliberately rolled his own body and the weight of the madman, who held
him, over the edge of the coping. At the same time he twisted the
madman's wrist so the point of the knife pointed to the madman's body.
There was a dim consciousness of a painful impact. Teddy had fallen
underneath, but the force of the two bodies coming together had thrust
the knife deep into the entrails of the Mad Musician.
Clouds which had been collecting in the sky began a splattering
downpour. The storm grew in fury and lightning tore the heavens, while
thunder boomed and crackled. The rain began falling in sheets.
* * * * *
This served to revive the unconscious Teddy. He painfully withdrew his
body from under that of the madman. The falling rain, stained with the
blood of the Mad Musician, trickled over the edge of the building.
Teddy dragged himself through a window and passed his hand over his
forehead, which was aching miserably. He tried to get to his feet and
fell back, only to try again. Several times he tried and then, his
strength returning, he was able to walk.
He made his way to the studio where he had left Linane and found him
there surrounded by police, reporters and others. The infernal machine
had been rendered harmless, but was kept intact as evidence.
Catching sight of Teddy, Linane shouted with joy. "I stopped the damned
thing," he chuckled, like a pleased schoolboy. Then, observing Teddy's
exhausted condition he added:
"Why, you look like you have been to a funeral!"
"I have," said Teddy. "You'll find that crazy fiddler dead on the
twenty-ninth story. Look out the window of the thirtieth story," he
instructed the police, who had started to recover the body. "He stabbed
himself. He is either dead or dying."
It proved that he was dead.
No engineering firm is responsible for the actions of a madman. So the
Muller Construction Company was given a clean bill of health.
* * * * *
Jenks and Elaine Linane were with the girl's father in his study. They
were asking for the paternal blessing.
Linane was pretending to be hard to convince.
"Now, my daughter," he said, "this young man takes $500 of my good money
by sounding me out, as he calls it. Then he comes along and tries to
take my daughter away from me. It is positively high-handed. It dates
back to the football game--"
"Daddy, dear, don't be like that!" said Elaine, who was on the arm of
his chair with her own arms around him.
"I tell you, Elaine, this dates back to the fall of 1927."
"It dates back to the fall of Eve," said Elaine. "When a girl finds her
man, no power can keep him from her. If you won't give me to Teddy
Jenks, I'll elope with him."
"Well, all right then. Kiss me," said Linane as he turned towards his
radio set.
"One and one makes one," said Teddy Jenks.
Every engineer knows his mathematics.
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