"Hawkins," I said, resignedly, as a vicious "sizzzz" announced the evolution of a great puff of red gas, "we can never do it in two minutes. Better not attract the rest of the household by your racket.
They may possibly escape. Stop!"
"And stay here and be blown to blazes?" cried Hawkins. "No, sir! Down she goes!"
He seized a stool and dealt a crashing blow upon the panel. It splintered. He raised the stool again, and I could hear footsteps hurrying from below. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, and----
Well, I don"t know that I can describe my sensations with any accuracy, vivid as they were at the time.
Some resistless force lifted me from the floor and propelled me toward the half shattered door. Dimly I noted that the same thing had happened to Hawkins. For the tiniest fraction of a second he seemed to be floating horizontally in the air. Then I felt my head collide with wood; the door parted, and I shot through the opening.
I saw the hallway before me; I remember observing with vague wonder that the gas-light went out just as it caught my eye. And then an awful flash blinded me, a roar of ten thousand cannon seemed to split my skull--and that was all.
My eyes opened in the Hawkins" drawing-room--or what remained of it. Our family physician was diligently winding a bandage around my right ankle.
An important-looking youth in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was st.i.tching up a portion of my left forearm with cheerful nonchalance.
My brand new dress suit, I observed, had lost all semblance to an article of clothing; they had covered me, as I lay upon the couch, with a torn portiere.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_I saw the figure of a policeman standing tiptoe upon a satin chair_."]
The apartment was strangely dark. Here and there stood a lantern, such as are used by the fire department. In the dim light, I saw the figure of a policeman standing tiptoe upon a satin chair, plugging with soap the broken gaspipe which had once supported the Hawkins" chandelier.
The ceiling was all down. The walls were bare to the lath in huge patches. The windows had disappeared, and a chill autumn night wind swept through the room.
Bric-a-brac there was none, although here and there, in the ma.s.s of plaster on the floor, gleamed bits of gla.s.s and china which might once have been parts of ornaments. Hawkinsite had evidently not been quite as powerful as its inventor had imagined, but it had certainly contained force enough to blow about ten thousand dollars out of Hawkins" bank account.
From the street came the hoa.r.s.e murmur of a crowd. I twisted my head and my eyes fell upon two firemen in the hallway. They were dragging down a line of hose from somewhere up-stairs.
Across the room sat my wife and Mrs. Hawkins, disheveled, but alive and apparently unharmed. Hawkins himself leaned wearily back upon a divan, a huge bandage sewed about his forehead, one arm in a sling, and a police sergeant at his side, notebook in hand.
I felt a fiendish exultation at the sight of that official; for one fond moment I hoped that Hawkins was under arrest, that he was in for a life sentence.
"He"s conscious, doctor," said the ambulance surgeon.
"Ah, so he is," said my own medical man, as the ladies rushed to my side. "Now, Mr. Griggs, do you feel any pain in the----"
"Oh, Griggs!" cried Hawkins, staggering toward me. "Have you come back to life? Say, Griggs, just think of it! My workshop"s blown to smithereens! Every single note I ever made has been destroyed! Isn"t it aw----"
In joyful chorus, my wife, Mrs. Hawkins and I said:
"Thank Heaven!"
"But think of it! My notes! The careful record of half a----"
"Herbert!" said his--considerably--better half. "That--will--do!"
"It--oh, well," groaned the inventor disconsolately, limping back to the divan and the somewhat astonished sergeant of police. Hawkins must have had some sort of influence with the press. Beyond a bare mention of the explosion, the matter never found its way into the newspapers.
After I got around again I tried in vain to spread the tale broadcast. I had some notion that the notoriety might cure Hawkins.
But, after all, I don"t know that it would have done much good. I cannot think that a man whose inventive genius will survive an explosion of Hawkinsite is likely to be greatly worried by mere newspaper notoriety.
CHAPTER VI.
The name and the precise location of the hotel are immaterial. If you happened to be there that night you know very nearly all that occurred; if not, you have in all probability never heard of it, for I understand that the proprietors took every precaution against publicity.
Let it suffice, then, that the hotel is a prominent and a fashionable one, located somewhere between the Battery and the Bronx, and that Hawkins and I sat at a table in the restaurant on that particular evening and feasted.
The inventor had called at my office and dragged me away to dine with him, rather to my surprise, for I believed him to be somewhere in the South with his wife.
You see, after a certain explosion in their home, a month or two of reconstruction had been necessary; and I opine that Mrs. Hawkins had thought best to remove her husband while the repairs were being made.
If he had been there it is dollars to doughnuts he would have invented a new bricklayer or a novel plastering machine and wrecked the whole place anew.
It was in reply to my query as to his presence in New York that Hawkins said:
"Well, you know, Griggs, it impressed me as very foolish from the first--that idea of my wife"s of getting out of town while the place was being rebuilt."
"She may have had her reasons, Hawkins," I suggested.
"Possibly, although I fail to see what they were. When a man"s own home is being built--or rebuilt--his place is on the spot, to see that everything is done right. Now, how, for instance, could I, away down in Georgia, know that those workmen were properly fitting up my new workshop?"
"Workshop?" I gasped. "Are you having another one built?"
"Certainly," snapped Hawkins. "I didn"t mention it to Mrs. Hawkins, for she seems foolishly set against my continuing my scientific labors. But I fixed it on the sly with the architect. It"s all finished now--has been for a week and over--power and everything else."
"Hawkins," I said, sadly, "are you going right on with your experimenting?"
"Of course I am," replied the inventor, rather warmly. "It"s altogether beyond your poor little brain, Griggs, but scientific work is the very breath of my life! I can"t be happy without it; I"m not going to try.
Why, all those seven weeks down South one idea simply roared in my head.
I had to come home and perfect it--and I did. I"ve been in New York nearly three weeks, working on it," concluded Hawkins, complacently.
"And you"ve managed to perfect another accursed----" I began.
Just then I ceased speaking and watched Hawkins. His ears had p.r.i.c.ked up like a horse"s. I, too, listened and heard what seemed to be a heavy automobile outdoors; at any rate, it was the characteristic chugg-chugg-chugg of a touring car, and nowadays a commonplace sound enough.
But it affected Hawkins deeply. An ecstatic smile overspread his face, and he drew in his breath with a long, happy:
"A-a-a-a-a-ah!"
"Been buying a new auto, Hawkins?" I asked, carelessly.
"Auto be hanged!" replied the inventor, energetically. "Do you imagine that an automobile is making that noise? I guess not! That"s my new invention, Griggs!"
"What!" I cried. "Here? In this hotel?"