The Argosy, April 1916 — page 88: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

78 marched vigorously away, turning south- ward toward Twenty-Third Street. The proprietor and the landlady of the boarding-house joined Tom in staring after the unusual customer. “Funny old guy, wa’n’t he?” remarked Tom; “but I guess he meant well enough.” “He acted like a minister, or a school- master, or something like that,” observed the landlady, ‘but I must say he looked like a perfect gen’leman!”’ Tom walked slowly to the door and looked down the avenue, and was just in time to witness a puzzling incident. The old gentleman was nearly a block away from the shop, and he was furtively tucking his parcel of porterhouse steak into a gar- bage can that stood in front of a tenement building. “Well, what do yer think o’ that!” Tom gasped. “Some old cat, on the hunt, will think he’s struck Thanksgivin’ Day!” - He watched the old gentleman hurry away from the cache and pass out of sight in the distance, and then he returned to his work; but he pondered on the strangeness of the thing so long that other customers came in and claimed attention, and he ne- glected to tell the proprietor anything about it. “Roasting chickens, eighteen cents, ma’am,” he said, in answer to a question. “They ain’t no cold storage truck, neither. We got ’em from Jersey, dry-picked He did not finish the eulogy. Something had happened that left every one in the shop silent and open-mouthed. It was an explosion, apparently, followed instantly by a jarring, grinding, long-drawn crash which seemed to shake the air. It was something like the collapse of a great, many-storied building during the last stages of a blighting conflagration, but, if any- thing, it was heavier, more cataclysmic. The two butchers and their customers ran to the sidewalk. They saw men and women and boys speeding through the cross streets toward Seventh Avenue. Tom started forward with boyish impulsiveness, then halted and drew back, mindful of his duty. ... “Go’n see what ‘tis, Tom!” muttered Joyce, with vague awe in his voice, and Tom went. | Through Twenty-fifth Street he ran, rac- ing with the eager, wide-eyed crowd, and as he drew nearer to Seventh Avenue he saw THE ARGOSY. clouds of thick, brown dust, hanging in the air like the smoke from a park of artillery. There was still some noise, too; confused and meaningless; shouts of people, crashes of falling lumber, and the medley of street sounds magnified tenfold. He gained the corner, stopped abruptly, glared wildly through the dust swirls, and uttered a great shout of horror. An entire block of Seventh Avenue had —He could hardly tell himself what had happened. The bottom had not dropped out, but the top had dropped to the bottom. The wide, even pavement of strong planks which had roofed over the excava- tions for the new subway, had collapsed like a thin and fragile crust, and precipitated horses, vehicles and pedestrians into the hitherto unseen abyss of the underground city. Tom sit: a score of earlecaniane spec- tators rushed to the edge of the chasm, un- mindful of danger. They saw—dust, chief- ly; but through it they could make out strange, uncanny movement—maimed peo- ple beginning to grope and crawl, and horses writhing and kicking. A street-car, which had been speeding up-town with its morn- ing load of working people, lay on its side amid splintered beams and planks, frag- ments of steel braces, and broken stone and concrete. Two policemen were clambering down the ragged face of a precipice of rock and shattered woodwork. It was time for the people who had been spared to go to the relief of less fortunate mortals. Unexpected bravery is engendered by soul-sickening ordeals. The man who nor- mally shrinks from a cold shower bath plunges into an icy torrent when a person he never saw before is. drowning. Tom Pender stripped off his butcher’s apron and sprang to the edge of the great hole. There was a sheer drop of thirty feet to the nearest ledge of crumbling rock, but while others shrieked at him to stop, he swung himself down and got a preca- rious foothold on a jutting fragment of timber. His hands found a protruding end of broken conduit pipe, and again he swung down till his feet touched a mere ex- crescence of wreckage. The new lodgement gave way, and he fell. Some twenty feet he dropped, claw- ing for holds, and fending himself from jagged splinters and broken pipes. ‘Then Co DOOLK (©